‘The Smell of Football’ is the candid story of his eventful 35 year-career in professional football of Mick ‘Baz’ Rathbone.
As a young player crippled by nerves (and an irrational fear of the legendary Trevor Francis!), Baz struggled to hold down a place at his boyhood club, Birmingham City, but went on to forge a distinguished career in the lower leagues with Blackburn and Preston in the ‘70s and ‘80s.
Baz qualified as a physio when his body finally gave in and, after a rollercoaster season battling against the relegation trap door as manager/physio at Halifax, he re-joined Preston where he met up with a young David Moyes. After a successful period at Preston he eventually joined forces again with David at Everton as Head of Sports Medicine.
At Goodison Park he was responsible for the well being of millions of pounds worth of talent – rubbing shoulders with the likes of Duncan Ferguson, Wayne Rooney and Tim Cahill – in a remarkable eight year spell that would take him to the heights of walking out at Wembley on FA Cup Final day.
The book is the honest, uncensored account of life in the dressing room – charting the changing face of football up and down the divisions, from booze-fuelled bus trips and £50 a week pay packets, to the glitz and glamour of the Premiership and its celebrity trappings.
Penwizard
The Fashion of Football, by Paolo Hewitt and mark Baxter, is a groundbreaking work that examines for the first time the link between football and fashion. Voted one of the 50 best football books by Four Four Two magainzine, it features a selection of rare photographs which enliven the text, the book divides itself into a work of two halves – the first depicting how fashion has influenced the players and the second showing how it has been represented in the stands. We begin in 1962, when restrictions limiting earnings from professional football were lifted and footballers started to splash out on looking good. First we visit George Best’s boutique in Manchester, try on the Terry Venables wig and reveal how the 1970s Chelsea team used flamboyant King’s Road boutiques to gain the upper hand in psychological battles with fierce rivals Leeds. We then move on to the ’80s to consider the influence British black footballers brought to bear on fashion, leaving room to mention the hairdressers and the mullet. Into the ’90s and, well, we’re confronted with Liverpool FC in white suits and David Beckham in a skirt…Back in the stands for the second half, The Fashion of Football describes how football fashion has been influenced by the world around it – from the ’60s working-class Mod look to ski.