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Details
Title: Neil Lennon: Man and Bhoy
Author: Martin Hannan with Neil Lennon
Published: 2006
Player Homepage: Neil Lennon
Synopsis
Captain of Celtic and midfield enforcer for Northern Ireland, Neil Lennon is one of the most controversial figures in British football. His story is an extraordinary tale of religious bigotry, life-threatening career injury, tumultuous football success at club level, and of the remarkable events that led him to turn his back on his country. The first Northern Irish Roman Catholic to play for Celtic and to be chosen to captain his country, Lennon was sensationally forced to quit the captaincy even before he took the field following death threats by Loyalist paramilitaries. In Northern Ireland, the words ‘Neil Lennon RIP’ were painted on a wall near his family home, while in Scotland, he has been the target of vicious verbal and physical assault by fans of Old Firm rivals Rangers — including being mugged on the street and hung in effigy. Now he will give his side of these stories, revealing in full the terrible consequences of the religious hatred that has tainted his career.
Lennon will write of his Leicester years under Martin O’Neill, and how the Midlands club defied bigger rivals by maintaining their Premiership League status and winning two League Cups. He will also tell the inside story of Celtic under O’Neill; how his GBP5 million transfer to Parkhead nearly didn’t happen; his wrongful arrest on a club night out; lifting the domestic treble in a glorious first season with Celtic, and the continued revival of the club to the point where they reached the UEFA Cup Final (narrowly losing out to a Jose Mourinho-inspired Porto); and his relationship with current boss Gordon Strachan and the team’s successful season in 2005/06.
As he approaches the twilight of his playing career, Lennon has decided the time is right to reveal all about his life on the field — including his horrific spinal injury and his less than happy apprenticeships at Motherwell and Manchester City — as well as his hitherto closely guarded private life, including his battle with depression. It’s a book that will shock football to its core.
Review
Irish footballers have been among the most prominent exponents of the mea culpa sports autobiography in recent years. Tony Cascarino and Paul McGrath have produced open and apologetic works detailing personal failure, far in tone from the bland self-justification inherent in most of the genre.
Man and Bhoy seems, at first, to promise similar raw revelation. The opening chapter of the book recalls, at length, the events of August 21, 2002, when the BBC newsroom in Belfast received a phone call from a loyalist terrorist group threatening Lennon’s life hours before he was due to captain Northern Ireland in an international at Windsor Park. Lennon’s “crime” was to play for Celtic and the death threat, whether serious or not, was the final, devastating climax to a season-and-a-half of abuse from a significant minority of Northern Ireland supporters whenever he appeared in Belfast. It’s a period that should shame numerous people, including some members of the media and the Irish Football Association who, at times, gave the player very ambivalent backing. The impact of the situation on Lennon and his family, who still live in the small Armagh town of Lurgan, is evident.
Elsewhere, Lennon paints an accurate picture of life as a child in a divided provincial town during the “Troubles”, including the murder of a school friend and the riots resulting from the hunger strikes of the early 1980s. Further on in the book he admits to periodic problems with depression and alcohol during his career and expresses enthusiasm for biographies of Che Guevara.
These nuances, his early struggles at Manchester City and Crewe, and being booted in the face by Alan Shearer appear to give him a perspective beyond the end of his wallet. He comes across as a more sensitive and thoughtful individual than his public persona, as a hard-nosed midfielder with Leicester City and Celtic, would suggest.
Yet this is ultimately a frustrating read, mainly because the revelatory approach to Lennon’s personal life doesn’t extend to his discussion of football. Dressing room omertà applies, which means that, although he has played for a couple of clubs in interesting times among some of the stronger characters in the game, we learn little about them that we couldn’t glean from scanning the football press. We learn that Steve Walsh, for instance, is a “tough-as-teak centre-half” and “no saint”, but we never find out why this is the case. “Trouble seemed to follow” Stan Collymore around, while Martin O’Neill is obviously respected by his players, but anyone looking for an insight into what makes him a revered manager will be disappointed.
Detail is also light in other areas. The Leicester ticket scandal that marred the 1999 League Cup final is addressed, but the name of the player who “came into the dressing room with a sports bag full of money and handed out wads of cash” is never revealed, and Lennon doesn’t question why footballers on five figures a week ignored FA rules for the sake of seven grand.
Regrettably, the “and then…” feel to the depiction of much of the action on the pitch, along with an obligatory grumble about the press, signals that the bubble in which so many professional footballers exist envelops Lennon in the end.
Robbie Meredith When Saturday Comes
Product Details
Hardcover: 384 pages
Publisher: HarperSport; illustrated edition edition (4 Sep 2006)
Language English
ISBN-10: 0007233477
ISBN-13: 978-0007233472
Product Dimensions: 23.4 x 15.8 x 3.6 cm
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