The Diary of a Professional Footballer

Only a Game?

The 40th anniversary edition of the classic inside account of a season at a professional football club

The 40th anniversary edition of the classic inside account of a season at a professional football club 
 
"The best book about football I have read by someone who has actually played the game...everyone who has ever dreamt of a sporting career should read it" - Nick Hornby 
 
The season began so well for the Republic of Ireland international midfielder Eamon Dunphy at Millwall - and ended in disillusionment and being on the transfer list. In this classic memoir, he charts the progress of the team during a season that begins with such high hopes and is filled throughout with high drama. Populated with extraordinary characters - and with access to the dressing room that would be impossible today - Only a Game? is both a riveting read and an exceptional insight into professional sport. 
 
"It remains both greatly admired and unmatched." - Richard Williams, The Guardian 
 
"The best and most authentic memoir by a professional footballer" - Brian Glanville 
 
"Exceptional. It became the standard by which similar books were judged, and was exceeded in acclaim only with the publication of Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby more than a decade later." - The Times

Eamon Dunphy was a professional footballer in the 1960s and early 1970s, with Manchester United and then mainly Millwall, also winning 23 caps for Ireland. He subsequently wrote columns on both football and current events, presented on radio for several stations including Today FM, Newstalk and RTÉ Radio 1, and regularly appeared as a football analyst on Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ). He has also written a biography of Matt Busby and ghost-wrote the autobiography of Roy Keane. He lives in Dublin, and describes himself as having been "a good player, not a great player".

"The best book about football I have read by someone who has actually played the game...everyone who has ever dreamt of a sporting career should read it" Nick Hornby 
 
The season began so well for the Republic of Ireland international midfielder Eamon Dunphy at Millwall -- and ended in disillusionment and being on the transfer list. In this classic memoir, he charts the progress of the team during a season that begins with such high hopes and is filled throughout with high drama. Populated with extraordinary characters -- and with access to the dressing room that would be impossible today -- Only a Game? is both a riveting read and an exceptional insight into professional sport.

Eamon Dunphy

An absolute cracker ... provocative, endlessly entertaining, occasionally over the top but brimming with passion and heart. A memoir worthy of the life and times it describes

Outstanding ... To paraphrase the great man himself, it's not a good book, it's a great book

Excellent ... a exceptionally engaging read

A cut above the typical 4-4-2 sporting autobiography ... full of delicious anecdotes

It's a testament to his succinctly brutalist skill as a writer that The Rocky Road remains fascinating even in its most wrong-headed moments

The Rocky Road is the autobiography of Eamon Dunphy - the man the Guardian called 'the most entertaining, blindingly brilliant pundit of all time'. 
 
For more than thirty years, no commentator on Irish sport, politics and culture has been the object of so much love, hatred and fascination as Eamon Dunphy. Now, for the first time, Dunphy tells the remarkable story of his own life - from his childhood in Dublin, through his experiences as a footballer at Manchester United and a series of smaller clubs, to his return to Ireland, where he became a remarkably influential journalist. In one of the most hotly anticipated Irish autobiographies of recent times, Dunphy bravely and brilliantly takes us behind the scenes of a passionate life.

Eamon Dunphy

Praise for The Rocky Road

An absolute cracker ... provocative, endlessly entertaining, occasionally over the top but brimming with passion and heart. A memoir worthy of the life and times it describes

Outstanding ... To paraphrase the great man himself, it's not a good book, it's a great book

Absorbing and heartfelt

An absolute cracker ... provocative, endlessly entertaining, occasionally over the top but brimming with passion and heart. A memoir worthy of the life and times it describes

Outstanding ... To paraphrase the great man himself, it's not a good book, it's a great book

Absorbing and heartfelt

An absolute cracker ... provocative, endlessly entertaining, occasionally over the top but brimming with passion and heart. A memoir worthy of the life and times it describes

Outstanding ... To paraphrase the great man himself, it's not a good book, it's a great book

Absorbing and heartfelt

Books by Eamon Dunphy

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