Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12833 in Books
• Published on: 2008-03-24
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 352 pages

Synopsis
Footballing legend Tommy Smith played with Liverpool for eighteen years from 1960 to 1978. During this time he won almost every honour club football has to offer, 4 First Division Championship medals, 2 FA Cup winners medals, 2 European Cups, 2 UEFA Cups, 1 European Super Cup and 5 Charity Shields. He captained Liverpool for a number of seasons and played under both Bill Shankly and Bob Paisley, widely regarded as two of the greatest managers British football has ever produced. In that time he was forged into one of football's original hard men, Shankly once said, 'Tommy Smith wasn't born, he was quarried.'A uniquely tough but thoroughly fair player (in spite of his fame for the most punishing of tackles), he was sent off only once and booked only twice, on all three occasions for dissent. In this fascinating autobiography, Tommy gives us the inside story of a whole host of footballing legends - Bill Shankly, Bob Paisley, Ron Yeats, Kevin Keegan, Matt Busby, Brian Clough, George Best, Jimmy Greaves, Bobby Moore, Denis Law and Pele, as told by one of their own. A nostalgic view of a golden age of English football, this is a window on the glory days of Liverpool.

It is also the story of the time before the game was all about the money and Tommy has a lot to say about football today, so he's not changed. As Bob Paisley once said, 'Tommy doesn't tackle opponents so much as break them down for resale as scrap.'

Customer Reviews

A Great Throw-Back to old-times Football
An excellent book, giving a personal account of what it was like playing football back in the sixties and seventies. There are some great stories and anecdotes, including Bill Shankly and Bob Paisley fixing the toilets in the stands, Tommy himself taking two weeks to saw off a girder and digging out the penalty box to a depth of six feet one close season. Classic examples of what players and staff did in those days that we wouldn't dream of asking players to do these days.

An Insightful Entertaining Read
Unlike the plethora of ghost-written, attention-seeking, drivel that is usually spewed out from publishers in time for the beginning of the football season, this is an intelligent, well-written autobiography of one of Liverpool's most famous and successful players, providing a fascinating and insightful trawl through the career of a player who was at the very top of his profession during the sixties and seventies.

This was a time when the British game was blessed with some of the greatest managers and players that it has ever seen; a period during which England won the world cup with players whose wages were little more than an average factory employee, even though attendances were higher than at any other time in the game's history.

As a self-styled `hard man' in a team that was to become the most successful in the history of the game, Tommy Smith takes us back to those times through a typically frank and honest account of his entire football career in a style that is literate and never anything less than thoroughly entertaining.

Tommy's memory certainly isn't as good as it used to be however, and his recollections can sometimes be riddled with errors, most notably during his account of Liverpool's failure to beat Arsenal and become league champions in May, 1972. Just for the record Tommy, Leeds United's 1-2 defeat at Wolves meant that a single goal victory over the gunners would have been enough for the reds to have clinched the title on goal average.

I'd like to think that Tommy knew that on the actual night of the match itself!

Recommended.

Anfield Iron
This is the first time I have ever reviewed a book, but having read this book I feel I have to write to say how much I enjoyed it. Having been born on the Wirral and a Liverpool supporter all my life I loved Tommy Smiths book. The humour and honesty throughout, especially the stories about Bill Shankly are brilliant, I could not put the book down.