Jim White was on tonight's Off the Ball Football Show to promote his new book ‘A matter of life and death,’ which attempts to capture the history of football in 100 quotations.
The first is a quote from the Mayor of London circa 1314, which advises that citizens cease ”hustling over large balls,” which he forbids “on pain of imprisonment.”
One of the many edicts against the game, White says it shows how football was once a very anti-authoritarian game.
Some more recognisable quotes include Brian Clough’s “Throw your medals in the bin” and Roy Keane’s attack on the “Prawn sandwich” brigade.
White outlines the explosive popularity of the game since its inception:
“Within 10 years [of the first codified rules], there were people in Russia playing these games in front of 30,000. It really was revolutionary.
The book touches on the tragic as well as the humorous, and looks at the devastating effect of World War I on the Football League.
Initially football had continued as normal, but “there were a lot of naysayers saying that the footballers were cowards.”
“The players themselves got together and had a public meeting and they all decided that they were going to go to war.”
900 footballers were lost in the war, many of them professionals. Orient suffered more than any other club, losing three first team players in the battle of the Somme alone.
On the lighter side of things, White has collected a number of interesting footballing nicknames for the book. Two of his favourites being the following:
Former Derby, Blackburn and West Ham and defender Christian Daly; who was known as ‘Parish newsletter.’
And Kiki Musampa, who became known in Man City as ‘Chris,’ or ‘Chris-musampa.’
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