From The Back Page To The Front Room by Roger Domeneghetti (@WAATG)

It’s funny how just an idea for a book can make you think differently. In this one, Roger Domeneghetti looks at how the media and football are now almost always intertwined and linked and how they can both dominate our lives. We all remember the Prime Minister talking about David Beckham’s metatarsal, right? Of course we do, it was reported as huge news!

I’ve read many a football book, I love reading about different aspects of our beloved game. Yet no book has sent me nostalgically back to the classroom like this one. That is in no way a criticism, I adored my history lessons and this book is a bit like learning from a wonderful historian that can get you thinking of ancient times and relating it to the present day. In the opening chapter it dispels the myth that football was born in England, nope instead it origins probably started in China around 225BC, not many football books will take you to the Tsin Dynasty.

Now if you like an easy going, almost fairytale story book like a Wayne Rooney autobiography, then this isn’t the book for you. It challenges you and creates a zest for learning with some funny lines added in for balance.

My favourite chapter was Holding Out For A Hero. Not many folk will have the ingenuity to compare Roy Race with Beowulf. I loved ‘Roy of the Rovers’ as a child and he was that gifted footballing hero that could do nothing wrong. Roger tells us the history of Roy as well as how the cartoon was a huge staple for so many kids growing up. But we also found out that football had been doing this for generations in the form of cards and the like.

Now many of you know I work in the media industry (production) and like to critique SKY, BT Sports and the rest of them on their current product. But I didn’t know a huge amount of footballs history in the medium and how it all started off. But with ‘From The Back Page To The Front Room’ you get a detailed look at how football went from the terraces to our living rooms.

From cover to cover we see how football has come together with pretty much every media outlet and form imaginable, and it’s all documented in this wonderful book.

This is a must for all intellectual football fanatics and football historian devotees. Superbly thought out, well researched and classically written so, like its subjects, it will stand the test of time!

Publisher: Ockley Books

Available to buy HERE

Note on Photo:

A new one for me, as it involves animation. Quite literally its bringing the book to the front room with an old school flickering TV.

 

Posted on December 11th, 2014 by scott
Filed under: Book Review