This Sporting Life
Recommended by Richard Beard, and 1 others. See all reviewsRugby League football in an industrial northern city circa 1960 is a life of grime, mud, sweat, intrigue and naked ambition. In This Sporting Life, David Storey recounts the fortunes of gladiator hero Arthur Machin from the day of his inclusion in the local team to the match when he begins to feel age creeping up on him. Through Arthur we are taken into his raw, often brutal world of players, backers, Saturday crowds bloody noses and broken teeth, landladies and communal baths. less
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Richard Beard This is actually a book about rugby league, but – like some players of rugby – it can play both codes. This book really goes across both codes, and is about the harshness of the game on the pitch, and how that can relate to life off the pitch as well. It is just a very accurate, gritty representation of how the hero can be expressive on the pitch among men, and much less expressive in the life he’s trying to lead. He breaks his nose in the second paragraph and loses two teeth, which immediately gets you into the book. There’s a film of this with Richard Harris in it. (Source)