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Product Description
Robin Friday was an exceptional footballer who should have played for England. He never did. Robin Friday was a brilliant player who could have played in the top flight. He never did.
Why? Because Robin Friday was a man who would not bow down to anyone, who refused to take life seriously and who lived every moment as if it were his last. For anyone lucky enough to have seen him play, Robin Friday was up there with the greats. Take it from one who knows: 'There is no doubt in my mind that if someone had taken a chance on him he would have set the top division alight,' says the legendary Stan Bowles. 'He could have gone right to the top, but he just went off the rails a bit.' Loved and admired by everyone who saw him, Friday also had a dark side: troubled, strong-minded, reckless, he would end up destroying himself. Tragically, after years of alcohol and drug abuse, he died at the age of 38 without ever having fulfilled his potential.
This book provides the first full appreciation of a man too long forgotten by the world of football, and will surely give him the cult status he deserves.
About the Author
Paul 'Guigsy' McGuigan is the former bassist in Oasis. While on tour with the band in America, Guigsy came across a magazine article about Robin Friday and was inspired to find out more about the genius maverick player. This book is the result of his investigations.
Paolo Hewitt is the author of several bestselling books, including The Looked After Kid, Heaven's Promise, The Fashion of Football, and biographies on Oasis, Paul Weller and The Jam. He is also features editor at Watch magazine.
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Robin Friday played less than three seasons for the (old) 4th divison Reading RC and then "retired" after a short spell at Cardiff City at the ripe old age of 24. Undoubtedly of remarkable natural ability ( he could have played for England we are repeatedly told by a string of credible witnesses), it is however Friday's off field antics which hold your interest and largely explain why two decades on McGuigan chose to write a book about him.
In terms of style this is not a classic biography, relying almost exclusively on a series of interviews with family and friends and contemporary newspaper reports. But all this is put together very well by McGuigan and co-author Paulo Hewitt making the book very readable. Indeed, this somewhat hotch potch approach almost perfectly reflects the life of Robin, a man who even at the peak of his career seemed to live out of carrier bags and cheap digs with a variety of wives,women, boozers and drug dealers never far behind him.
The book is funny, intriguing and tragic - Friday died in poverty aged only 38 in 1990. But the authors succeeed in presenting Robin Friday as a genuine talent and lovable rogue that for all his obvious faults you can't help liking. A good read. You wouldn't need to be a football fan to enjoy it, and in the absence of evidence from an era when TV coverage was limited to the big clubs a fitting tribute to a player I had never heard of but wish I had.
This book is excellent and my only regret is that it has taken me this long to find it. For a Reading fan from the 70's it is so evocative but for any football supporter or anyone with an interest in the human condition it is a great read.
If Robin Friday was twenty five years old today he would be earning millions and would hopefully be receiving wise counsel from whichever club was lucky enough to have his services. Instead he played in an era when lower division footballers earned half the wages of scaffolders and plasterers and were largely left to their own devices off the field. With a little bit of the pastoral help that today's players get from the bigger clubs who knows....
The diary style and first hand nature of a lot of the comments in this book help to put everything in perspective and in it's own historical context. I finished the book in one gulp and put it aside with nostalgia and emotion flowing over me and an over powering sadness at the thought of what might have been.
70s football was a difficult time for real natural talent, Besty proved that, without Georges probs/history maybe a suitable club would have been offered to... Read more
Fantastic image you build in your mind of the man and the footballer, hard not to continually think of Best, but the... Read more
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