Steve Roud was Local Studies Librarian for the London Borough of Croydon and served as Honorary Librarian of the Folklore Society for over fifteen years. He has been researching British folklore for over thirty years and is the joint author of the Oxford Dictionary of English Folklore, plus other books on traditional drama and folk song, and the Penguin Guide to the Superstitions of Britain and Ireland, which won the Katharine Briggs Folklore Award in 2004. His publications include London Lore (2008) and The Lore of the Playground (2010). He also compiles the Folk Song Index and the Broadside Index, two internationally acclaimed computer databases of traditional folk and popular song. He lives in Sussex.

Steve Roud

PublicationStatus

Brand

Format

AgeRange

Series

Imprint

CategoryLabel

Barney Ronay

Fast approaching 30, Barney Ronay is a Sunday League left back with some tough choices to make. Is staying in with his girlfriend and Gardeners' World on a Friday night doing much for his match fitness? Would he be better off back with his best mate Dan in the bachelor pad of pizza boxes, lager and Playstation into the early hours? And at their age can they still afford to spend weekends in their desperate struggle to keep Bolingbroke Athletic afloat? Shouldn't they be growing up, getting married, spending their Sundays at Homebase? 
 
This is the hilarious story of a team in early mid-life crisis, hiding from responsibility in the strange masochism at the ugly end of the beautiful game - the smell of Deep Heat, naked fat men, hangovers and the eternal belief that next week you might just rediscover your first touch.

Any Chance Of A Game?

Packie Bonner

Irish national hero, a Celtic great and their most-capped player, Patrick 'Packie' Bonner is a goalkeeping legend. 
 
He was Jock Stein's last signing for the club when he left his native Donegal for the city of Glasgow in 1978, where Packie evolved from being a shy, homesick teenager into a confident, world-class talent and first-choice goalkeeper. Billy McNeill handed him a debut on St Patrick's Day in 1979, and Packie went on to provide the last line of defence a record 641 times for the club. A seasoned Irish internationalist, Packie was a vital component in the most-celebrated Irish national squad ever, playing in a golden era under the tutelage of the inimitable Jack Charlton. 
 
In The Last Line, Packie shares stories from his incredible career, including his greatest moment in front of a global audience during the Italia '90 World Cup tournament when he became the penalty shoot-out hero of the nation by saving a spot-kick that took the Irish to the quarter-finals stage in their very first World Cup adventure. 
 
It was an iconic moment that would change his life forever not least because, whilst in Italy, he, along with his teammates, had an audience with another goalkeeper, Pope John Paul II. 
 
Throughout his 80 cap international career, he competed against the very best in the world. Men such as Ruud Gullit, Marco Van Basten, Gheorghe Hagi, Roberto Baggio and Gary Lineker came to know the name Packie Bonner. Equally, in his glittering Celtic career that included the winning of four Scottish League titles, three Scottish Cups and one Scottish League Cup, Packie Bonner played alongside some great Celtic names like Tommy Burns, Paul McStay, and Murdo Macleod. 
Along the way, Packie had to endure a career-threatening back injury, as well as the devastation of a routine save going wrong and costing a goal on the world stage against Holland in 1994, ultimately leading to elimination from the World Cup in America. 
 
More than just the telling of trophies, titles and triumphs, this is the story of a Celtic legend and a true great of Irish International football.

The Last Line: My Autobiography

Harry Redknapp

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 
 
'The beautiful game has taught me a lot, but I’ve had quite a life outside of football too. This book is full of my best stories – kickabouts with jumpers for goalposts with Bobby Moore, mine and Sandra’s disastrous honeymoon to Torquay in a dodgy car and my funniest ‘Mr Pastry’ moments – as well as my thoughts on the important things in life. 
 
I’m finally sharing what I’ve learned on and off the pitch: from growing up poor in Poplar to the heights of the Premiership and even lying in a coffin with a load of rats on national television. It’s everything I know about true team spirit, hard work, tough times, why family are so important and why everyone deserves respect no matter whether they’re royal or sleeping rough – and, of course, the real joy of a jam roly-poly.'

The World According to Harry

Danny Baker

Danny Kelly

At last! The award-winning Baker &amp; Kelly bring you the most entertaining, radical and unreliable football book ever published. The Two Dannys argue the toss, spill the beans and chew that fat about everything and anything from the biggest questions down to stuff they have frankly invented themselves. 
 
Which club has the handsomest fans? Who is the greatest player of all time? Pele? Maradona? Puskas? Rougvie? Have foreign players helped or hindered the English game? Well, Marco Boogers, well? And who was the greatest football dad, Fred Baker or Andy Kelly? 
 
Now with even more footballing facts, myths and legends, the paperback asks (and answers) hard-hitting questions, such as, what was the greatest ever World Cup? Just how much pathetic World Cup tat can one own, Danny Kelly? And where do all those beautiful women in the crowd come from? 
 
A cornucopia of footballing fun and well-crafted wisdom that is certain to sell like beer-flavoured crisps. Baker &amp; Kelly: Sometimes right sometimes wrong - but always certain.

Classic Football Debates Settled Once and For All, Vol.1

Peter Crouch

Shortlisted for the Sports Entertainment Book of the Year at the British Sports Book Awards 
 
The funniest man in British sport - Metro 
 
Peter Crouch is a comedy genius - Daily Mail 
 
Often recruited before they've worn long trousers, today's footballers become superstars who earn huge amounts without ever learning much about the world beyond the training ground. Coddled by their support teams, everything is done for them. They live their lives in the glaring media spotlight, yet only really develop one life skill - how to kick a ball better. Then inevitably, when age catches up with them or injury strikes, these man-children are thrown out into the real world, utterly defenceless apart from their multi-million-pound bank accounts. 
 
So what do these Peter Pans, whose careers end just as most people's are getting going, do with the rest of their lives? Crouch speaks from his own experience and discusses with fellow former professionals too - just how do you safely release a near seven-foot striker back into the wild? 
 
Peter goes in search of the answer to what his second career might be and encounters stories far more bizarre than anything you'll find on the pitch. From the pleasure and pain of management to the lessons we can learn from Jamie Carragher and Joe Cole on not going to seed. From those staying in the sport - the diehard veterans, coaches, managers, owners and of course the legion of pundits, to those moving on to pastures new. Peter talks to entrepreneurs, men of the cloth, eco warriors, artists, private detectives and budding actors, as well as those who've lost their way in addiction, crime and NFTs. 
 
When the final whistle blows, it's still all to play for.

How to Be an Ex-Footballer

James Bannon

'Of course I'm a f**king hooligan, you pr**k. I am a hooligan...there I've said it...I'm a hooligan. And, do you know why? Because that's my f**king job.' 
 
In 1995, a film called I.D., about an ambitious young copper who was sent undercover to track down the ‘generals’ of a football hooligan gang, achieved cult status for its sheer brutality and unsettling insight into the dark and often bloody side of the so-called beautiful game. 
 
The film was so shocking it was hard to believe the mindless events that took place could ever happen in the real world. Well, believe it now... 
 
Almost twenty years on, the man behind the film has explosively revealed that the script was largely a true story. That man, James Bannon, was the ambitious undercover cop. The football club was Millwall F.C. and the gang that he infiltrated was The Bushwackers, among the most brutal and fearless in English football. 
 
In Running with the Firm, Bannon shares his intense and dangerous journey into the underworld of football hooliganism where sickening levels of violence prevail over anything else. He introduces you to the hardest thugs from football’s most notorious gangs, tells all about the secret and almost comical police operations that were meant to bring them down, and, how once you’re on the inside, getting out from the mob proves to be the biggest mission of all. 
 
A disturbing but compelling read, this is the book that proves fact really is stranger than fiction.

Running with the Firm

Tony Hawks

'All I knew about Moldova were the names of eleven men printed on the inside back pages of my newspaper. None of them sounded to me like they were any good at tennis ...' 
 
An eccentric wager finds Tony Hawks, a man who loves an unusual challenge, bound for the little-known Eastern European state of Moldova. His mission: to track down members of the country's football team and persuade them to play him at tennis. The bizarre quest ultimately has little to do with tennis or football, but instead turns into an extraordinary journey involving the Moldovan underworld, gypsies, chronic power shortages, near kidnap, and a surprisingly tender relationship with his host family. 
 
Follow the fortunes of Tony in this hilarious and often moving adventure as it takes him from Moldova, onwards to Northern Ireland, leading to an exciting denouement in Nazareth - and the naked truth of the bet's final outcome ...

Playing the Moldovans at Tennis

**A Daily Mail Book of the Year** 
 
What happens on the pitch is only half the story. 
 
Being a footballer is not just kicking a ball about with twenty-one other people on a big grass rectangle. Sometimes being a footballer is about accidentally becoming best mates with Mickey Rourke, or understanding why spitting is considered football’s most heinous crime. 
 
In How to be a Footballer, Peter Crouch took us into a world of bad tattoos and even worse haircuts, a world where you’re on the pitch one minute, spending too much money on a personalised number plate the next. In I, Robot, he lifts the lid even further on the beautiful game. We will learn about Gareth Bale’s magic beans, the Golden Rhombus of Saturday night entertainment, and why Crouchy’s dad walks his dog wearing an England tracksuit from 2005. 
 
Whether you’re an armchair expert, or out in the stands every Saturday, crazy for five-a-side or haven’t put on a pair of boots since school, this is the real inside story of how to be a footballer.

I, Robot

How to Be a Footballer 2

'Very funny on almost every page, wonderfully self-deprecating and very sharp on the ludicrous behaviour of the modern player' - Sunday Times 
 
'The funniest man in British sport' - Metro 
 
**A Sunday Times Sports Book of the Year** 
**Shortlisted for the National Book Awards** 
**Longlisted for the Telegraph Sports Book Awards Autobiography of the Year** 
 
You become a footballer because you love football. And then you are a footballer, and you're suddenly in the strangest, most baffling world of all. A world where one team-mate comes to training in a bright red suit with matching top-hat, cane and glasses, without any actual glass in them, and another has so many sports cars they forget they have left a Porsche at the train station. Even when their surname is incorporated in the registration plate. 
 
So walk with me into the dressing-room, to find out which players refuse to touch a football before a game, to discover why a load of millionaires never have any shower-gel, and to hear what Cristiano Ronaldo says when he looks at himself in the mirror. 
 
We will go into post-match interviews, make fools of ourselves on social media and try to ensure that we never again pay £250 for a haircut that should have cost a tenner. We'll be coached and cajoled by Harry Redknapp, upset Rafa Benitez and be soothed by the sound of an accordion played by Sven-Goran Eriksson's assistant Tord Grip. There will be some very bad music and some very bad decisions. 
 
I am Peter Crouch. This is How To Be A Footballer. Shall we?

How to Be a Footballer

Spencer FC

How one man went from gaming and making videos at home to becoming a football club owner 
 
'The bizarre new world of football' Guardian 
 
I lifted the trophy triumphantly over my head, just as I’d seen so many FA Cup, World Cup and Champions League winners do on TV. It was quite simply the best moment of my life. Hashtag United had won. 
 
So, how on earth did this happen? How did a kid who at one point couldn’t even get in his school team end up playing at Wembley Stadium in front of 20,000 people? How did someone who spent his life playing computer games get to play football in the same side as World Cup- and Champions League-winning players? 
 
I'm hardly sure myself. But here's my attempt to tell the story.

Gamechanger

From playing FIFA to owning my own club

Phil Shaw

My parents have always been there for me, ever since I was about seven - David Beckham 
 
For Tony to admit he is an alcoholic took an awful lot of bottle - Ian Wright on Tony Adams 
 
I've been playing in a golf day for a boy seriously injured in a car accident. I had to drive like a lunatic to get here - Ray Houghton, TalkSport football pundit, on why he was late on-air 
 
Reporter: What would you be if you weren't a footballer? 
Peter Crouch: A virgin. 
 
I've never been so certain about anything in my life. I want to be a coach. Or a manager. I'm not sure which - Phil Neville 
 
Footballers may not be known for their profound insights, but it seems no one in the game is above a mixed metaphor or confused cliché. From Harry Redknapp to Martin O'Neill, Patrice Evra to Jason McAteer, see the funny side of the beautiful game with this hilarious collection of verbal own goals. Packed full of hilarious quotes, quips and misfires from the biggest names in football, Tell Him He's Pele is a must for everyone with a sense of humour.

Tell Him He's Pele

The Greatest Collection of Humorous Football Quotations Ever!

George Best

'We were the first generation to have to deal with the modern stardom of football. Some handled it better than others' George Best 
 
Written in the months before he died, Hard Tackles and Dirty Baths is George's farewell letter to the great footballing era in which he burned so brightly - a personal history of the golden years before TV and agents changed everything. From the breaking of the maximum wage to the cusp of the first million-pound player, it follows the triumphs and tragedies of every season from 1960 to 1974. It is the story of our greatest footballing generation - Greaves, Moore, Law, Charlton, Osgood, Lorimer, Jennings, Hurst and, of course, Best himself.

Hard Tackles and Dirty Baths

The inside story of football's golden era

The greatest football quotations collection ever, now in its ninth edition. 
This compilation includes quotes from everyone – Shakespeare to Suarez, Camus to Cantona, Busby to Beckham – who has made an apt, pithy or comical comment about football. And not just footballers and managers either – fans, pundits, groundsmen, directors and wives all get to have their say too. Every subject is covered, from tactical debates to changing lifestyles, to produce a sometimes hilarious and always thought-provoking commentary on the game. 
 
‘My players are always the best players in the world, even if they aren’t’ - José Mourinho 
 
‘He was a quiet man, Eric Cantona, but he was a man of few words’ - David Beckham 
 
‘Sometimes when you aim for the stars you hit the moon’ - Ian Holloway

Showing results for: ‘Steve Roud’

Filters

Category

Publication Date

Format

Imprint

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter