You Can't Take Carlisle From the Boy

It offers up 448 pages and supplements the statistics with potted histories of the club, the greatest players and other elements of our story including recaps on selected matches stretching back over a century. I could attempt a review, though you'll find copies for inspection in the club shop and bookshops in Carlisle, and doubtless trust your instincts when you do.

I think it is more important to say that I'm definitely in the camp that sees the final publication of 'The Complete Record' as long overdue and very welcome. I know it's become predictable that the appearance of such books on clubs often prompts posts from those taking issue with some specific fact. A few problems - one or two typos and the odd mistake from Paul - got a good airing on our message boards a fortnight or so back.

That's hardly the point as I see it. Let's bear a few things in mind. There are clubs out there barely fit to inspect copies of 'The Complete Record' who have had their own lengthy books for years. I was in the crowd at Cambridge during the 'Rod Squad' years when their match announcer went into a rant encouraging the crowd to buy copies of a recently published book on Cambridge United's greatest players.

What I remember clearly is that the book in question contained details of 100 players and that banter soon broke out in the Carlisle section of the crowd wondering whether Richard Prokas would qualify in their top 100. Hell, if a club so lowly they once obliged opposing supporters to approach the turnstiles through the local allotments can qualify for such a book it's about time we had one volume that might begin to explain to any fan what we've achieved, and why the history of Carlisle United matters.

For all the comments about the quality of this photo or the odd slip in the text there are things to give credit for. Firstly, when a fair tonnage of our history was thrown out at the end of the Knighton era and photographs and irreplaceable programmes were consigned to the nearest skip, the sheer wealth of detail in 'The Complete Record' is to be welcomed.

Paul Harrison has done a great job in the places where such work isn't easy. For example; the balanced commentary on momentary managerial career of Keith Mincher reminds us how strange the machinations at Brunton Park had become during that period. To put it another way, if you could dip a piece of the magic paper Chemistry teachers always seem to have on hand into 'The Complete Record' and read the resulting colour as a measure of the accuracy of the book, it would score so highly that anyone else attempting to better it would be well advised to employ a massive team of researchers and give up a year or so to complete the task.

I'll confess to being one of those prepared to pay first and stand up and be counted in the list of the terminally addicted at the front of the book, so I'm biased. I'm not here to review it, and I'm not here to argue the toss about every line. I just want to make the point that we're lucky to support a great club.

Carlisle United is, was and always will be special. Special because it is a local club, isolated from many others. Special because the city, the county and the fans will always be defined by the distance from other places, and will always see themselves as 'the Cumbrians.' I'm writing this on the back of four league defeats and the agony of death by penalties against Rochdale in the JPT.

For all that I know I'll go to Milton Keynes in a few days time to watch a game I could see on Sky and I know I'd sooner be doing that than watching Middle Eastern money pour into my club and artificially inflate its value. I mean, WTF is football about when it's one bunch of billionaires against another? To put it another way, if 40,000 people surrounded a branch of Tescos and started chanting support for it, there'd be concerns about public order. But the top end of the Premier League is just about at that level, money and brand first, football and fans second.

What I see in 'The Complete Record' is a history of local heroes and stories that will be recounted wherever Cumbrians meet for years to come. Which is just fine with me. Somewhere in those 448 pages are the reasons I'm going to Milton Keynes in a few days, end of!

The Blue Army bit.

Thanks to those of you who've contributed. As some of you know already, I've got about 20% of a great book but nowhere near enough to get it out for Christmas. With Paul's excellent book out and Andy Hall's title coming soon it's likely that Blue Army will be unleashed towards the end of the season. Details of how to contribute are - as always - on the books page of my site: http://www.neilnixon.com/books.htm

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