Faith and Football: Played for the Glory,
by Marc Lyden-Smith, foreword by Cardinal Vincent Nichols
(McCrimmon Publishing, £7.95 / €9.50; available on Amazon, or search mccrimmons.com/shop/books/faith)
This is a delightful little book which will be greatly appreciated by sport lovers and especially football fans. It provides a comprehensive account of Sunderland Football Club in the North East of England, who competes in the English Premier League. The book is compiled by Fr Marc Lyden-Smith who for many years has served as chaplain to the club.
In setting out the membership of the club, Marc begins with the staff. It is a wide list and all-embracing. He notes that the club staff includes the coaching staff, the grounds staff, the administration and office staff, the security staff, the ticket-office staff and the club-shop staff. Premier League clubs would also have statisticians and nutritionists.
The players and the coaching staff are the most visible employees at a football club. Because the Premier League is a global phenomenon with fans the world over, players and sometimes coaches can gain international fame and astronomical wages.
Rivalry
In a world with so much money and notoriety footballers can often find themselves on the receiving end of unfair criticism. However, as Lyden-Smith points out, footballers do not have an easy and straightforward life.
Their development from their earliest years is based on working hard on football lessons after school, honing their skills, working on fitness levels and training most nights of the week. Then in their adult life they are only as good as they were in their last game and the pressure on them to retain their place on teams can be intense.
In the top levels of football, the lives of coaches are precarious. They are appointed to bring success to the club’s team. If they fail in this their contracts are terminated.
Lyden-Smith writes about the intense rivalries which can exist between neighbouring clubs and teams”
Lyden-Smith writes about two well-known coaches who served at Sunderland: Sam Allardyce and Martin O’Neill. The ‘larger than life’ Allardyce was as much an entertainer as he was a manager. O’Neill had remarkable success wherever he was in charge but he is always remembered as the legendary boss at Celtic, the giant football club in East Glasgow.
Lyden-Smith writes about the intense rivalries which can exist between neighbouring clubs and teams. Everybody in the “football world” is aware of that which exists between Celtic and Rangers in Glasgow.
The same intense rivalry hovers over the Sunderland team and their neighbours’ Newcastle United. This rift can be traced back to the English Civil War of 1642 when the people of Newcastle supported the King and those in Sunderland sided with Parliament and Oliver Cromwell.
Fans
Lyden-Smith records how this rivalry led to a shameful incident in March 2000. More than seventy supporters of Sunderland and Newcastle, armed with knives, bats and bricks, engaged in a brawl in which one man was left permanently brain-damaged.
Lyden-Smith does not overlook the importance of the fans. They are not an accessory to a club; they are its living memory. When a team is successful the joy can radiate into the streets of a city. Conversely when it falters the mood of a city may slacken. As in other well-known clubs, the Sunderland community of fans set up a charity: the “Foundation of Light” to assist those in various needs.
Lyden-Smith does not overlook the role of the club chaplain, namely to enhance the physical and spiritual well-being of all its members. He shares with his readers interviews he conducted with some of the best-known professional footballers in the world, as they discussed the place of religion in general and Catholicism in particular, in their lives. Before concluding he warns that no football rivalry should cause us to forget that we all belong to one another.
On a personal note may I add that I particularly enjoyed reading this book, not least because I had the happy experience of acting for more than a dozen years as the unofficial chaplain to the Kerry Senior football teams coached by Paudie O’Shea, Pat O’Shea and Jack O’Connor.
