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Details
Title: Sack The Board!
Author: Allan Caldwell
Published: 1994
Synopsis
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Review
Detailing the overthrow of the old Celtic board in the dark trophy-less days of 1994 Allan Caldwell’s Sack The Board! is the story of Fergus McCann’s Paradise coup as seen from the viewpoint of fellow ‘rebel’ leader Brian Dempsey.
Former Evening Times journalist Caldwell covered the twists and turns of this incredible saga for the Glasgow paper and he presents this book as his independent telling of the takeover. However, with a forward written by Dempsey, it is soon obvious that Caldwell’s book is not as independent as he would like you to believe.
Nevertheless, like Michael Kelly’s ‘Paradise Lost’, ‘Sack The Board!’ is an interesting – if imbalanced – insight into the most desperate period in Celtic’s history.
The reader is told plenty about the ineptitude and arrogance of the Kelly/White board, the trauma of the thankfully brief Cassidy era and the board’s near disastrous handling of financial matters. Much of this we know already of course but it still sends a shiver down your spine when you see in black and white just how close this gang of amateurs came to steering Celtic on to the rocks.
Caldwell’s writing style can grate at times and there were periods in the book when I wasn’t sure if I had accidentally picked up a bad 1950s American detective novel. His habit of making up conversations which he could not possibly have heard was also rightly criticised by Michael Kelly in ‘Paradise Lost’.
Overall, interesting but not essential reading. What could have been a good “independent” look at the events in this debacle is nothing less than a disappointment.
Product Details
Author: Allan Caldwell
Paperback released: 1994
ISBN: 1 85158 682 2
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