Review - THE FARTHER CORNER – Harry Pearson

This book review first appeared in issue 154 of the TRUE FAITH fanzine.

Not enough great books have been written about NE football. That’s not to say really good football books haven’t been written about the game in the region but just not enough of them. Amongst them, I’d put Michael Walker’s excellent UP THERE (a must read for the speccy swotty boring bastards amongst you who take an in-depth look at the history and culture of the game in the region.

I loved Michael’s book – it was a serious piece of commentary from a writer with an arm’s distance view of the region’s foibles to allow perspective and distance but at the same time close enough to have an affection and warmth to the place, the people and the game we have contributed so much towards.

But I don’t think many would say The Far Corner by Harry Pearson wasn’t a better read, benefitting from more humour and the bizarre experiences of ordinary football, be that at the region’s Big 3 (ha-ha) or amongst the home-spun world of non-league football. As might be said in social media world, I LOL’d lots of times reading Pearson’s first book published 25 years ago. I now feel old. I am old.

Back in ’95, NE football imagined itself to be on the cusp of a bright future. Newcastle United led the way with a KK inspired team, the thought of which keeps old Mags warm on cold winter nights, a SJP in redevelopment while down the road the Mackems were looking forward to a move to a new stadium and Boro were getting used to the Riverside, Juninho, Emerson and Ravanelli.

The day never really came for any of the region’s three prominent clubs and as we look at the bottom three spots with a cold sweat and a potential third Ashley relegation, Sunderland spending their fifth successive season in Division 3 or whatever and Boro barely thought about we can say things didn’t turn out we hoped.

But Pearson’s first book and its successor a quarter of century later were both heavily infused by the region’s non-league scene.

As he did a quarter of a century ago, Pearson ploughs that furrow. The style is roughly the same but he has eschewed specific chapters dealing with United, the Mackems and Boro but rather fixes them in chapters of largely Northern League fixtures.

It works well. Pearson (I should have said he is a Boro fan who decanted to the Tyne Valley) goes on any nice little journeys from the games themselves, checking off some local history, heroes and by and large captures a time in society which is fading from view. There are very few people still working at least who did shifts in collieries, shipyards and steel-works. Those people shaped our region’s football cultures and although they were fading when Pearson wrote the first book their legacy lived beyond them. For how much longer we have to speculate. Post-industrial, post-modern ... whatever, the world has changed unrecognisably.

In honesty, I preferred the first book. But this is still worth adding to your book shelves. It will make you smile .. and given the state of Newcastle United and the world it is in right now that is a very good thing.

MICHAEL MARTIN