Singin' the Blues: A Homage to Carlisle United [Paperback]

Excellent, bloody excellent. By turns hilarious, tragic and chillingly honest. Just possibly the best book about one man and his team since Fever Pitch.

'One man, one team, one love.' Singin' the Blues is the story of author Neil Nixon and his undying love for Carlisle United. Covering thirty years of triumph and tragedy the book records Carlisle's memorable week on top of the professional game, their recent brushes with non-league extinction and much more.

One Man. One Love. One Club. At the age of ten, Neil Nixon first saw Carlisle United. Three decades later, and despite moving South to do missionary work on behalf of all things Cumbrian, he's still there. This is his story.

When they tell you the truth about Santa Claus its only the start. My Dad once cheerfully explained to me that one role pets serve is to teach us to cope with death. They live shorter lives than we do and our attachments, though deep, don't as a rule reach the levels of depth we get with the people we learn to love. The cheerful discourse from my Dad was heading in the direction of grim Cumbrian humour. The basic point being that we're all gonna die anyway and that little stiff upturned hamster is your starter for ten. Oh sure, its tragic but it's also cuddly, cute, un-mutilated and seemingly peaceful. Your grandparents might pull off looking peaceful in the chapel of rest but cuddly, give me a break! It just gets worse, by way of a few relatives, at least one of whom will - statistically speaking - go before disease and decay get a chance, possibly as the result of getting on the wrong end of some unforgiving machinery that'll reduce the contents of the casket to something resembling a Kebab with the Tabasco seriously overdone. The Grim Reaper just keeps lurking in the shadows. Those creeping dark thoughts that started with the speculation about how that beloved pet might really 'be' with the angels gradually turn round to you and the fact that your fading frame won't withstand the cells from within trying to kill it, the wearing out of the vital bits of machinery and the gradual drip drip effect of the abuse you hand out to your metabolism every time you open the biscuit tin. The longer you live the more you realise those grim reminders from the Grim one are there for you and you alone, that's age and experience for you and in the face of the grimly unavoidable the least you can do is get in the odd sick chuckle. It's worth planning ahead, because there is an ahead for all of us. I'm waiting for the day when the cancerous lumps are pushing up against my skin to give it that unmistakable bag of spanners effect, my lungs are stubbornly refusing to push against the inside of my body and that worrying pain in my chest has reduced my arms to flapping and pathetic extensions of my useless body. Maybe then I'll admit I need a visit to the doctor.

DOC - Ermmm....Mr Nixon, what appears to be the problem.

NEIL - Well, you see, Doc, it started with my hamster.

Life's like that. There is a stubborn predictability to the way things carry on with absolute indifference to our own growth and death. Football for starters. There is a point to the fining of footballers for bringing the whole thing into disrepute but oddly, it seems to me, those imposing the fines don't really get that point. They throw fines and bans at a bunch of men in the prime of their athletic lives and the highest profile penalties are reserved for the role models, those whose earning power and ability to pull crowds has already reminded them they are special. Let one of these players commit some atrocity of bad conduct and the authorities punish them with massive fines and/or bans that simply remind the world how gifted these people are. The petty machinations aimed by the football authorities at a few outspoken 'characters' don't belittle these mavericks and trouble-makers.

The game - most certainly - is bigger than anyone and the point of fining and suspending people for threatening the reputation of their sport is to remind us all that football is the constant and the people in the game are the short term means by which the game continues. If you really want to bring them down and make this point you would be better forcing an Eric Cantona or Stan Bowles to read dusty books of statistics and census data to trace the lives of past internationals. Let them marvel at the crowds in front of which the internationals of the twenties and thirties played. Let them consider what it meant in those days and then give them the task of convincing a bunch of present day Arsenal loving school-kids that they should give a shit about the career of George Male. If they fail in this task, give them 100 hours community service emptying bed pans for a bunch of terminal confusion cases with their minds stuck hopelessly in the past. You know, people who can talk about nothing other than George Male.

CASE - David Beckham, never heard of him Son. 'Ere, when you've done with the bedpan bring us me paper and then you can polish up me signed photo of George Male. Hell of a player George Male.

FOOTBALLER IN TROUBLE - Er, yeah, right.

That'll hurt more than fining them a week's wages.