Careless Hands: The Forgotten Truth of Gary Sprake (Sport (Tempus)) [Hardcover]

The much maligned goalkeeper of Leeds United's glory days answers back to the critics and some of his ex-team mates who claim that he was a liability and prevented the Yorkshire club from winning more trophies.

I believe that the co-authors have achieved their aim in this excellent book by using the match reports of the time and from interviews with some of Gary's former team mates and opponents.

Sprake himself openly admits his goalkeeping mistakes which he became infamous for and also talks frankly about his near death experience in 1976.

Gary has never been formally invited back to Elland Road since he left in 1973 and has never been to any of the numerous reunions of the Revie team over the years. The reasons why are well documented in the book.

I would highly recommend this book to any football fan.

As a lifelong Leeds United fan and being old enough to have seen Gary Sprake play (on TV, David Harvey was the first keeper I saw live) I was pleased to see that the controversial goalie from the Revie era had finally released his memoirs. Like most Leeds fans, I remember Sprake as a decent keeper who made a few well publicised errors which were highlighted to give an unfair impression of his ability. After all, with over 500 games for one of the country's top teams to his name, surely he can't have been that bad!

Any footballer's story would contain a lot of content about football, but a well written account should also give plenty of insight into his personal life. The vast majority of Careless Hands consists of fawning praise for how well Sprake played in one match after another. These accounts are backed up by short quotes (in a different typeface) from reporters or players and Gary's thoughts (in italics). The constant changes in typeface/style gives the text a poor appearance and don't help readability.

Sprake was no doubt grateful to his biographers for constantly hammering home the point that Gary couldn't possibly have been the error prone keeper his detractors made him out to be, with all those brilliant saves he made. However, perhaps the editor should have suggested that mentioning this several times a page would be a distraction. We get 9 chapters of this, a quick chapter on the end of Sprake's career, then another lengthy chapter labouring the point that his mistakes were few and heroics many.

After taking 90% of the book convincing the reader that everyone is wrong about poor old Gary, we finally get to hear why he sold his soul to the dregs of the gutter that is the Daily Mirror (as it was called then). Of course, it was nothing to do with the money, after keeping quiet about "Don Readies" for so long he just had to get it off his chest... it was just a coincidence that he felt the urge to do this just as the Daily Mirror turned up with a fistful of fivers.

The evidence against Revie was overwhelming; an accusation by renowned Leeds-hater Bob Stokoe that dated back to the early 60s that he too suddenly had an urge to get off his chest; accounts from another former (not Leeds) player who had been paid by the DM; and other vague accounts that even the authors describe as "whispers". Yes, when I said overwhelming I was being sarcastic.

Finally, after the horrendously misjudged attempt to justify Sprake taking money from a gutter comic that had openly displayed its contempt of all things Leeds United (a tradition that continues to this day) ever since they had a sniff of success in the early 60s, we get another 2 chapters persuading us how amazing Gary was and how he was unfairly tarnished by his few mistakes. These chapters are cunningly titled "Retrospective" and "Postscript" in an attempt to disguise the fact that are merely regurgitated propaganda.

I admire Sprake as much as I admire any other player from the Revie era. However, my admiration has been sullied by his pathetic attempts to justify taking money from a gutter rag well known for hating Leeds United and Don Revie. The authors fail to mention how the allegations were completely discredited. It's a shame that Sprake didn't have the guts to come clean.

Instead of giving us an in depth story of Sprake's life and career, the authors have written a disappointingly repetitive catalogue of reasons why we should remember how brilliant Sprake was as well as trying to excuse him for his grubby dealings with the grubbiest of the gutter press. Sadly, a missed opportunity.

Whilst Gary Sprake deserves to be remembered as a fine keeper rather than for a few high profile blunders, I was dissapointed that in this book Sprake repeats the old story that Leeds attempted to bribe Wolves to lose a crucial match in 1972. The late Billy Bremner, who was named as the player who offered Don Revie's alleged bribe to the opposition players, sued the paper for libel and won substantial damages.

Sprake does mention the trial in his book and recalls how the other player who was paid by the paper for the story, Danny Hegen, declared he was unwell and did not give evidence. Sprake himself backed down from his earlier claims when called to the witness box.

However, he does not mention the testimony under oath of Derek Dougan,the Wolves legend who played against and indeed scored against Leeds in the match in question, who demolished the allegations when he told the court that no attempt was made to bribe Wolves and that the accusations were nonsense. Sadly, Sprake makes no mention of Dougan's testimony and instead repeats this disproven story.