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Details
Title: Poles ‘N’ Goals and Hesselink
Author: Paul Larkin
Published: 03 April 2012
Synopsis
“Convention is something we do in Las Vegas” Join Paul Larkin on a journey through the decades where he starts his life as a schemie in Muirhoose and ends up a schemie in New York. How did that happen then?
It’s Celtic through the ages and there are goals,pills, thrills and bellyaches along the way and don’t be surprised if you want to cross the street to avoid him by the time you’ve read this…
Review
(review by Kevtic)
Firstly let me apologise to Paul who kindly sent me a copy of his book to review back in the mists of time when I think it was the Blue Knights who were in the driving seat at Mordor. Now after a number of other bidders have come and gone I’ve finally got round to finally reviewing the book.
Now after the apology I have to say Paul Larkin is a bastard. I’ll explain why in a minute but it’s not in a John Greig type way.
PG&H isn’t your typical football book with a myriad of research and facts to keep the stattos interested. It is more about a fan writing for fans and telling a story that many of us will recognise. This book has more of a fanzine feel to it and when I contacted Paul about the book he said this was what he was looking for. With the opportunity for just about anyone to write and publish a book these days I think more of this type of story will start to appear and Krys Kujawa’s book above confirms more people are taking advantage of this option. Like the many Celtic forums and websites this also seems to be something else Celtic fans are leading the way on.
PG&H falls into 3 parts. The first part is about Celtic in season 89/90, Part two is contributors talking about their favourite Celtic goal and the final part is mainly about Jan Vennegoor’s contribution to Celtic in the 07/08. Parts one and three are also set against Paul’s life outside football which took him from Edinburgh to New York.
So onto the book itself and the reason Paul is a bastard. The reason Paul is a bastard is that he opened up memories or more specifically nightmares that I had long since shut away in the deepest darkest recesses of my mind and brought back the horror of being a Celtic fan for the majority of the 90s. He does do it in a rather humorous way though and tells the story intertwined with him growing up as 15 year old in Edinburgh. It does get a bit Trainspotting in places but that’s not a criticism and the book contains some industrial language, so if easily offended then this really isn’t for you. To remind you the 89/90 season was the season after we stopped the huns winning back to back trebles with Joe Miller taking advantage of the ‘stolen’ throw in. It was also the season that Judas signed for the hun. A treacherous act that took us years to recover from. The Poles of the title are of course are Dariusz Dziekanowski who was signed in Judas’s place and was later joined by countryman Dariusz Wdowczyk or Shuggie as he was known to his pals. We also signed Mikey Mikey Galloway (shiver) that season.
Paul regales us with trips round Europe and kindly gives us some tips on Europe’s red light districts of which he seems to have visited many while following the hoops over the years. In 89 it was his first red light trip to Munich and also the first round of the Cup Winners Cup and Celtic had drawn Partizan Belgrade. Those old enough to remember will have that name forever etched into their minds after 5-4 return leg win with Dziekanowski scoring 4 but going out on away goals. See what I mean about nightmares.
I won’t bore you with the actual match details but suffice to say 89/90 season wasn’t great , in fact , after a good start, well August was ok, it became a total disaster. We finished 5th, 17 pts behind the huns. You’ve no idea how grateful I am that KDS wasn’t around in the 90s. There was the odd highlight. Beating Rangers on our way to the Scottish Cup final which we promptly lost on pens to Aberdeen after Anton Rogan missed. All in all a season to forget which became a mantra for the 90s.
One of the interesting things Paul has done in the book is hand over writing duties to friends to explain other areas relevant to the time. This is done to good effect when Mark O’Neill writes about Italia 90 and Scotland’s part in it and then Alan Hosey gives us the story of the Wallace Mercer attempt to take over Hibs from a Hibs fan’s perspective. It’s very easy to get insular about your own club and I found these pieces very entertaining and provided an insight into how others view us and their own teams.
The 2nd part of this book is the goals part and is basically just a lot of Paul’s friends and/or acquaintances talking about their favourite goal. This part didn’t really work for me. Some faintly interesting stories but I found myself skimming through this part fairly quickly and only stopping when a particular goal I remembered was mentioned. It broke up the flow of the book for me and could easily have done without it. It almost felt like a competition to find the most obscure goal to choose.
Part 3 of the book is a little misleading about being a chapter about Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink’s contribution to Celtic. It is really more about the influence of the two goals he scored in season 07/08 against the huns and the tile winning goal at Tannadcice. The chapter starts off with season 05/06, Strachan’s first season and there are 8 pages by Hearts fan Paul O’Neill talking about Mad Vlad’s influence at Tynecastle and remembering the Burley season (or half a season) Again, interesting background and it’s always funny to read about Hearts feckin things up. There’s also an excellent piece by Kenny Miller of the Sunday Post about the return of ex-Celt John Collins to Easter Road and how the players stabbed him in the back despite them winning the League Cup.
Paul himself has moved to New York in late 2006 after a few holidays had seen him fall in love with the place. There are plenty of stories about his adventures in New York when football almost became sidelined. I’m sure there has been some artistic licence used here but it sounded like great fun either way. On the football side he does write extensively on the 07/08 CL campaign which started with the penalty shoot out victory against Spartak Moscow before the group stage involving Shaktar, Benfica and AC Milan. Along with fondly remembering last minute goals against Milan and Shaktar we are also reminded we started the away game in Lisbon with Chris Killen as a lone striker. Sadly this was also the season we lost Phil O’Donnell and Tommy Burns. John Paul Taylor provides a few tales of TB’s day at CP that shows the kind of man he was. Not that we needed reminding.
Of course we know how this extended season that wasn’t extended finally ended and again Paul passes over writing duties to someone who was at Tannadice to tell the tale of that glorious Thursday night before Paul finishes with a few paragraphs on how he viewed it watching from afar.
Overall, despite the horrors relived in part 1, I enjoyed this book once I got into the writing style. I wouldn’t have missed the favourite goals section if it wasn’t there and maybe others will like this bit but it felt a bit like filler to me. I very much liked the majority of outside contributions in the other sections though and if the quality of these contributions is sustained I’d be more than happy to see these in any future books by Paul. As I said earlier PG&H isn’t your typical Celtic book and I’m sure will not appeal to all fans but I think many of us will identify with the author especially if you were around to suffer the 90s.
7.5/10
Product Details
ISBN 9781105642753
Copyright Paul Larkin (Standard Copyright Licence)
Edition First Edition
Publisher Not Just…Inc
Published 03 April 2012
Language English
Pages 120
Binding Perfect-bound
Paperback Interior
Ink Black & white
Weight 0.23 kg
Dimensions (centimetres) 14.81 wide x 20.98 tall
Links
Poles ‘N’ Goals and Hesselink
Forthcoming book by Paul Larkin
Mar 15 2012
Thanks to James and The Celtic Network for the platform to plug my stuff. This book, entitled Poles ‘N’ Goals and Hesselink and is out on April 6th via www.lulu.com, is basically a tribute people that have been real friends to me in my life. You’ll see that in it should you chose to purchase it. It is a book that I’ve wanted to do for a wee while but probably didn’t have the confidence to do until now. It is a bit of a leap from the normal structure I use, this time it is in three parts with a theme running through them all, a theme of hope.
It starts in season 1989/90 where at the point where all Celtic supporters thought, after a pretty disappointing season previous, the fight back was on when a certain signing captured all our imaginations. Of course that signing end up not signing and we all know what came next… As we travel through that season, I look at what things happened that were to end up being the start of a period of decline and there are various stories thrown in along the way that are not for the easily offended but happened and were par for the course in those days.
In Part 2 I and others talk about goals that meant something to us personally and there are some cracking stories involved there too from Lisbon right through to modern day. Lots of the people telling them will be well known to you as well.
Finally the last part covers season 07/08 and when I decided to move to New York. There is lots of input from others here again as folk talk about pertinent things from the era, I lace in some stories about what it was like to move to New York and what it is like to support Celtic from there too. Again there will be stories that will shock, then again I’m not looking for a tea and biscuits at Celtic Park.
The thing about this kind of stuff is that it will never be universally embraced and you can encounter a certain type of snobbery when trying to promote it. At first I didn’t get it why it happened, now I’m just not bothered. This is why folk who do support it and do buy the books mean the world to me. The book’s profits will be divided out between Mary’s Meals, CHAS and The Tommy Burns Skin Cancer Trust btw, all superb organisations.
There is a launch in The Admiral Bar on Sat April 7th 5pm onwards also.
In the meantime, if you fancy a laugh and had a few escapades yourself whilst following Celtic, then buy this book, you could well be in it.
Paul Larkin.