I think we can safely say that Bill Hern and I are proud of ‘Football’s Black Pioneers’. Initially we thought that perhaps people would turn to the chapter that dealt with ‘their’ team and then dip into a few other chapters as and when the mood took them. But a lot of people have been ‘hooked’ by the intriguing variety of stories on offer. One recent tweet had this to say ‘It’s a brilliant book, read it in one sitting, could not put it down, so many fascinating stories.’ That is not untypical of the feedback we’ve had.
One concern we had was that, in spite of four years of diligent research, people might find errors or challenge our conclusions. So far (fingers crossed, touching wood, etc) that hasn’t happened. No previously unheard of first black players have emerged to take the crown from any of the players we have identified.
The book may not not have made us rich (‘may not’? Definitely has not, JK Rowling we ain’t!) but it has been well received critically. Here is a recent review that appeared in the latest issue of ‘Backpass’ magazine, there have been other more fulsome ones but, so far, there have been no negative ones.
Had you asked us four years ago what ‘success’ would look like we might have said something like ‘getting a book published’. But, looking back four years, I think we would have been very happy with overwhelmingly positive reviews from newspapers as diverse as the Daily Mail and the Morning Star and 4.8 stars out of 5 on Amazon, I think we would have ‘snapped your arm off’ as they say!
Finally, if you are interested in football programmes, do take a peek at that section of our website as several new pages have been added recently https://footballs-black-pioneers.com/about/programmes-etc/
.