Steak - Diana Ross - David McVay

IT opens on a rubbish tip that doubles for a training ground littered with refuse engineers - known in those distant pre-politically correct days of 30 years ago as dustmen - and ends, more or less, at Elland Road, home of Leeds United and the European Cup finalists the previous season. The diaries of David McVay, written during his formative years as a teenager with Notts County during the 1970s, invite readers on an undulating and nostalgic soccer sojourn that can never be repeated in the context of the modern game. McVay's jottings create an evocative tapestry of a bygone and almost innocent age for football and his contemporary observations and insights deftly portray the decade that style forgot but one which still gives a generation sleepless nights. From February 1974 to October 1975, the scenery varies from The Shay at Halifax to Old Trafford while the cast of characters includes such luminaries as Don Revie and Brian Clough; the Ford Capri and Cortina provide the car chases with background music courtesy assorted artists such as Slade, Yes and Nick Drake. Of course nobody takes the credit for the wardrobe or dress sense director.;On the pitch, Manchester United visit Meadow Lane and their fans almost destroy it as Jimmy Sirrel, the Notts County manager whose marvellous idiosyncrasies illuminate the book, repels the Mancunian hordes with a bunion scalpel. Off it, Paul Smith opens his first boutique in the backstreets of Nottingham (his prices have risen steadily since) while the Exorcist and Abba arrive in equally garish manner. Steak...Diana Ross; Diary of a Football Nobody, celebrates with candid humour the team ethic and provincial camaraderie that was endemic in the sport long before the foreign legions invaded. The drink was always strong but the women stronger as a raw and diverse mixture of combustible personalities, thrown together into the community of the dressing room, strived desperately to win matches and remain friends despite a hectic social calendar.