Ever since the children of penniless immigrants caught the train from Whitechapel to White Hart Lane--to be greeted with the refrain: 'Does Your Rabbi Know You're Here?'--this forgotten tribe have helped to shape the Beautiful Game. In telling the fascinating lives of these largely unsung trailblazers, Clavane uncovers a hidden history of Jewish involvement in English football. From Louis Bookman, the first Jew to play in England's top division, to the pugnacious winger Mark Lazarus, whose last-gasp goal won the 1967 League Cup for QPR, to shady figures like One-Armed Lou, a ticket tout who never told the story of his missing limb the same way twice, through to the businessmen who helped form the breakaway Premier League, and in the process changed the English game for ever.
There are currently no Yorkshire teams in the Premier League; several of them have lurched from financial disaster to despair, tumbling down the divisions. The world-famous Headingley is no longer an Ashes test ground. Attendances at rugby league matches are falling. For the past three decades something has been missing from British sport. For some it has lost its heart and soul. This book's argument is that it has lost its Yorkshireness, which possibly amounts to the same thing. The 1980s, which were bookended by the capture of the Yorkshire Ripper and the Hillsborough disaster, were a tragedy for Yorkshire and its sporting teams. The collapse of the county's industries led to the ebbing of its power in three sports: football, cricket and rugby league. In this mercurial, post-industrial age, the biggest county in England remains a symbol of what sport has lost. A Yorkshire Tragedy is a lament for a disappearing world but also a celebration of the buoyancy that remains at the heart of the county's sporting identity. Extensively researched, and featuring many interviews with the decade's sportsmen, managers, miners, fans and local politicians, it casts a new light on an era that read the last rites for Yorkshire's - and the country's - collective, working-class culture.
This is a book about football. It's about unconditional love for a club, even when it doesn't always seem to love you back. But it is also a book about much more than that. Anthony Clavane loves Leeds - certainly the football club, but also the city, and the tribes that make it. Now that he is an exile in the South, his frequent pilgrimages to the stadium speak for themselves. But he no less loves the rarely-glimpsed back-streets of his youth; and even has a feel for the long-gone slums where his ancestors once settled. Leeds is his promised land; idealised and unreachable, yet still it defines him. 'Sports writing at its very best' Daily Telegraph
There used to be a sign hanging outside Leeds Station which bore the legend: 'Leeds, the Promised Land delivered'. This title explains why that sign was put up - and how it came to be taken down.
Ever since the children of penniless immigrants caught the train from Whitechapel to White Hart Lane--to be greeted with the refrain: 'Does Your Rabbi Know You're Here?'--this forgotten tribe have helped to shape the Beautiful Game. In telling the fascinating lives of these largely unsung trailblazers, Clavane uncovers a hidden history of Jewish involvement in English football. From Louis Bookman, the first Jew to play in England's top division, to the pugnacious winger Mark Lazarus, whose last-gasp goal won the 1967 League Cup for QPR, to shady figures like One-Armed Lou, a ticket tout who never told the story of his missing limb the same way twice, through to the businessmen who helped form the breakaway Premier League, and in the process changed the English game for ever.
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