Sports book review

Many moons ago, in the sepia tinted past, I wrote a weekly column for this newspaper called Sports Thoughts.

My mum liked it, and it made me laugh.

My hero as a columnist was Michael Parkinson, who could make you laugh or cry in equal measure — often in the same paragraph — as he reflected on his life in sport as both observer and participant.

The problem with Parky, as the years passed, is that he joined the “not like it was in my day” brigade, and settled for ranting about the modern ailments of sport in general and football in particular.

Enter James Lawton.

You have to be pretty good to have had a weekly column in the Daily Express and then become the chief sports writer for the Independent, and I doff my cap to that.

But the book James Lawton on Football starts brightly and then goes down the Parky route.

It is a collection of his columns in the Independent over the last seven years, starting with his farewell to life at the Express: “I thank you all, including Angry of Bedford. Without him, I might have believed I had died and was living in Heaven.” Good stuff.

The first Independent column starts with his reminiscences about times spent in the company of former Manchester City coach Malcolm Allison, and you settle back in the armchair thinking that you have an entertaining book on your hands. You are only on page 17.

And then he goes all Parky. The second column entry is entitled “I’m ashamed to be an Englishman” written after the England football fans rioted in Brussels.

There are 235 pages to go in the book. Occasionally you will stumble across some great lines, but if you are one who is happy to move with the times — and that doesn’t mean condoning football’s many current woes — you will find that time does not move quickly enough.