The three An Ordinary Spectator books aim to be far more than simple “I was there” catalogues of sporting events – major and minor – over a period which now extends into its seventh decade. Rather, they look to offer some insights into what we derive from sports spectating and – from an individual’s perspective – what watching sport tells us about ourselves.
An Ordinary Spectator Returns: Watching Sport Again (2023) presents a selection of various pieces of my sports writing – blogs, essays and magazine articles – over six years to the end of 2022. It captures the thrill of watching some of the elite sportsmen of the modern era at the top of their game. In addition, by describing sporting events within their specific communities – Major League Baseball in Toronto, shinty in the Scottish Highlands, amateur rugby league in Leeds – it offers some views on sport’s inherent capacity to act as a barometer of the society around it.
The book also includes reflective pieces on sports history – ranging from American sports journalism in the 1930s to the “Double” British Lions (in both the union and league codes) – as well as on contemporary issues such as the presentation of sport on television and the threat to contact sports posed by the greater awareness of the long-term impact of concussive injuries.
The book is a follow-up to Still An Ordinary Spectator: Five More Years of Watching Sport – Extracts (2017), which gathers together some of my published articles and essays over the previous five-year period. There is the same rich combination of contemporary detail and historical digression: high school American Football in San Antonio, Gaelic Football in County Mayo, club cricket in Saltaire…
The first publication was the award-winning An Ordinary Spectator: 50 Years of Watching Sport (2012). This memoir of five decades of sports spectating – from Yorkshire to London to Scotland via New York and Sydney (and Minsk!) – describes my experiences as a spectator at various sports events and examines what it is that has drawn me back to watch time and time again. The result is a unique perspective on why live sport is compulsive viewing.
All three books can be purchased from SilverWood Books as well as from Amazon and good bookshops.
An Ordinary Spectator 