The inherent danger of being asked to contribute to a football book is that the end product maybe be slipshod and you end up looking shoddy by association. When you fire off an email containing dubious insights into the psyche of the Tiger Nation as well as recommending pubs for away fans for publication, you envisage some embittered shaven headed City fan stood in Waterstones sneering at you for lending your name to a lame, poorly researched tome that looks like it was typeset by barbiturate addled Macaques.

Any such fears about my contribution to Footprint Travel Guide’s ‘Around The Grounds’ were dispelled shortly after a copy metaphorically thudded onto the Amber Nectar doormat. Now, club and stadium guides for all 92 professional clubs in England and Wales are ten a penny, as the embittered shaven headed City fan spending his lunch break in Waterstones knows, but this book, by Chris Nelson, is a superior slice of the genre, and no, I don’t say that because we’ve penned words for it, as we’ve done so for many ground guides and some are uber-crud.

The crud books are cliché riddled, tending to slavishly subscribe to long standing perceptions about clubs, Leeds and Newcastle for example would be deemed giants of the game, despite their recent reality being lower league scuffing and financial travails. The ground guide information is often stultifyingly functional and instantly out of date in regards ticket prices and range of hot pie flavours, and they’ll feature a cover image of Old Trafford to grab the attention of those who think football is only about the Sky Sports Big Four Consortium Of Awesome, after all the ultimate away day involves spending £50 for admission to the football version of EuroDisney, the Nike/AON sponsored shrine to corporate excess, doesn’t it? Um, no.

“So, if Around The Grounds is better than genre peers, what makes it so?” I hear you ask, err, think. I shall tell… 

It’s well researched for one, many knowledgeable fanzine and blog writers have been privately asked to give input about the club’s they support, whereas some less scrupulous book editors are content to ask publicly on a network site’s forum and use the first ill thought out response given. Here there is evidently a good degree of quality control and vetting, and those asked are writers of the more august club publications such as the well regarded Middlesbrough fanzine Fly Me To The Moon and the West Ham site Knees Up Mother Brown.

The questions asked relate to greatest and lowest moments on the ground in question, who fans regards as heroes and villains both on the pitch, in the dug out and in the boardroom, and something that non partisans should not attempt to discuss with partisan fans of a club. It’s fascinating to note that a Colchester fan questioned about the U’s finest Layer Road moment chose beating a Phil Parkinson managed City in 2006-07, shortly after he defected from the Essex club. For City’s ‘Don’t mention the…’ bit I plumped for the Boxing Day public team talk at Manchester City because surely we’re sick of hearing about that by now? (I felt mildly nauseous typing it just now, and I apologise if your cognitive functions shut down for a few seconds after reading it.)

Another plus is the refreshing honesty displayed in the scene setting parts written by the editors, for example the Emirates Stadium is rightly described as a magnificent arena, but there is no attempt to deny that the ground has, as we noted on our three recent visits, an atmosphere as lively as the waiting area in an AIDS test clinic. Now it may not be described as candidly as that here, but it is acknowledged, when most club or ground guides would just avoid mentioning it.

The expected club information about ground capacities, facilities, parking details and directions etc is all here, ticket prices are wisely not listed as that information will quickly be obsolete and many clubs vary their admission fees depending on the perceived stature of the opposition. Official website URLs are given to obtain up to date information on such matters, and several fan sites are listed should you care what supporters of forthcoming opponents think.

Rather novel is the inclusion of several essays on football culture halfway into the book in a section called ‘Half Time’ (the bifurcated club sections are labelled ‘First Half’ and Second Half’). One such essay by When Saturday Comes contributor and Grimsby Fan Pete Green notes the not entirely subtle differences between supporting a top Premier League side and following the Fishpackers, another deals with the evolution of playing kits, and is written and illustrated by the estimable John Devlin of True Colours Football Kits.

These added sections mean it is fair to describe Around The Grounds as more than just a ground guide (though not in the way that Mecca Bingo on Clough Road advertises itself as more than a bingo club, because that’s patently untrue, what else do Mecca do? Mediate Palestinian-Israeli peace talks? Rescue trapped Chilean miners? No, they just host bingo and need to come to terms with it.) and offers more than just dry facts about attendance records and away stand capacities.

What really elevates this book above it’s contemporaries however is the choice of illustrations. It would have been easy to Pritt-stick a run of the mill ground shot taken from a corner of each ground onto each page, sometimes adding a shot of a ‘Franchise player’ gurning in triumph, y’know, John Terry holding the FA Cup for Chelsea, Wayne Rooney snarling after scoring an equaliser at Blackburn for Manchester United, or, err, Keith Andrews with the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy for MK Mongs.

But no, there’s none of that entry level dross here, instead picture editor Demi Taylor has unearthed some true gems, Sheffield Wednesday’s write-up is augmented by an unfathomably fantastic picture of Pele playing for Santos at Hillsborough, Tottenham’s entry has a full page black and white image of three men polishing a giant cock (the metal one that sits atop White Hart Lane’s main stand, not David Ginola’s wanger), for Bradford, Stuart McCall is pictured wearing a leopard spot print formal jacket. Amazing.

Around The Grounds is full of brilliantly selected, wonderfully diverse and exquisite images that show something of extraordinary interest or capture a fragment of a club’s soul. I was half-expecting to find the infamous shot of Belle Vue’s Portakabin ‘executive’ boxes for Doncaster’s entry, though in the end they plumped for an evocative picture of a rainbow crested Keepmoat Stadium.

I noticed one forgivable mistake on the Hull City pages, as Anlaby Road is scatalogically renamed Analby Road once, but this induced mirth rather than anger, since they get it right several other times. Some may contend with the Boyhood Dreams editor’s fun fact about City never having a serving City player turn out for England, pointing to EDG Wright, but then Wright was listed as a Cambridge University player when he wore the lilywhite shirts of the national side.

If you have an old ground guide that was rendered out of date when Mansfield and York (hoho) fell into the Conference and wish to buy a new one to replace it, or just like decent football books, then Around The Grounds is for you, it’s an excellent book, in turns genuinely informative and insightful. Hell, I wish I could keep the review copy for myself, but Andy insists we give it away, but at least I don’t have to pay full price for a copy, and neither do you, as Footprint have kindly offered a 25% discount for all Nectarines.

25% DISCOUNT
To save a fiver on RRP then visit the FOOTPRINT TRAVEL GUIDES site and enter ‘footie’ in the coupon code box at checkout.

COMPETITION
One lucky sod will win the now well thumbed copy Footprint sent us to review, and since my words are in it I’ll even sign it in a breathtaking display of egocentricity (it’s ironic innit?) To stand a chance of getting Around The Grounds gratis, study the four welded together images below and identify the home club in each picture taken from a 2009-10 City away game.

Then send us an email (to aroundthegroundsbook@tigernation.co.uk) with your answers, name and address, in this format…

A Melchester Rovers 
B Rotor Volgograd 
C Jossie’s Giants 
D Norfolk & Chance

Ivor Bookshelf  
10 Geovanni Avenue 
Hull 
HU5 8MF

Get it to us by 5.20pm 18/09/10 and we’ll randomly draw a winner from those who know we didn’t actually play in southern Russia last year. Good luck.