England's Number One: The Great Adventures of a Serial Soccer Yob (Paperback)

Paul Dodd, an habitual criminal who follows a minor league football team, feels he can justify asking people to pay for a story which is written without insight, skill or humanity, and which follows him and his sheep like freinds as they rampage through physical attacks on strangers and the destruction of other people's property.

There have been a rash of books written (largely with the help of a partly-literate friend) by notorious football hooligans; although they seem to become less readable as the scramble for fame and cash takes hold, this book is still quite depressing in its' vacuity.

In between the recounting of his unimaginative criminal behaviour, Dodd manages to share with us some dodgy black and white holiday snaps of street fights, him and his mates in a pub, and him and his mates on a train. The photographs, made altogether more bleak and menacing by their poor, grainy quality and their dour locations, show a bunch of nasty, hateful, young men. Their violence almost springs off the page at you, but in a dirty, seedy way. I wonder if those unfortunate people who had to share the pub, the train or the street in Wigan with Mr Dodd and his overwhelming arrogance will wonder if all this merits a book being written about it. But perhaps the book does have some social value after all.

Perhaps, although I suspect unintentionally on Mr Dodd's part, he has provided us with a remarkable clear insight into the minds of people who, long after the erstwhile glamour and excitement of football violence has worn off, still plough their ugly, aggressive furrow.

There is no though behind anything such people do. The familiar criminal trait of outrage when he is faced with punishment for his crimes is evident here, just as it is with the bizzarre Stephen Hickmott book on the same subject. The shaky lines on which Dodd's evident xenophobia is based seem not to occur to him to be wrong; his premise is simply that all foreigners are the enemy and must be attacked. What Dodd would say if questioned on his stance on race does not take much imagination. One of the photographs in the more surreal part of the book shows a road close the Lansdowne road ground in Dublin before the England - Ireland match where English fans disgraced themselves and their team (again). The caption informs the reader that Dodd is not in the picture, the reason being he punched an Irishman on the way to the match and was arrested.

The curious title of the book seems to be an attempt to paint Dodd as a premier member of his country; think of it now, for a moment: a nation of 55 million people from all walks of life, a reputation as a creative, plucky, obedient and honourable nation in which, for some reason, a minor criminal from an obscure lakeland market town is somehow worthy of special consideration...

The enduring image I have after reading this unwelcome book is a piece of familiar news footage we have all seen; the images of a young Swedish man lying prostrate, as English thugs crowd round his unconscious body, aiming vicious kicks at his head. No doubt it is a piece of footage Mr Dodd and his friends would laugh at, time and time again.

It is also interesting to note that Mr Dodd forgot to mention the time he and his firm went toe to toe with Prestons firm outside Carlisle's ground in a 30 man a side brawl in 1994. Its also interesting to note the time Carlisle were chased through Preston city centre in 1995 and also the time Paul Dodd came off worse on a train to London when he bumped into our main lad. Funny that?