Woody and Nord: A Football Friendship (Gareth Southgate and Andy Woodman)*****

I love football and I love Gareth Southgate, so I was always going to enjoy this book a lot. And I did, but not just for the reasons I was expecting to enjoy it. The book is about a friendship between two men, one who makes it as a Premiership and international star, and his friend who spends a lot of time sitting on the bench in the lower leagues.

The book offers a fascinating comparison not only between the two situations, but also between Then and Now. It is very difficult to imagine, for example, Aaron Ramsey of Arsenal cleaning his team-mate Andrei Arshavin’s boots, but this was an everyday occurrence when Gareth Southgate and Andy Woodman were young players. They had to clean mud-covered football boots, keep the changing rooms clean and tidy, do whatever other filthy and time-consuming jobs they were asked to do - and all for under £30 a week. There are rumours now of players of that age earning at least £45,000 a week.

But the book is so much more than that. The friendship between Gareth and Andy is the important thing, and it is exciting, interesting and also encouraging to read about two people who genuinely care for each other, and how it develops even though the two live very different lives (in the same profession, yes, but still very different). Many people have commented that Andy has been lucky to hang onto Gareth’s friendship – and to an extent, they’re right. Anyone who finds such a strong friendship as these two is lucky. But what they actually mean is that Andy is lucky to stay friends with someone who’s so rich. Anyone who reads this book will know that side of things never comes into it.

Gareth and Andy did have a sports writer to help them with the book, but the impression is that they wrote most of it themselves. And they can both write. Andy, as Gareth tells us many times, can be hilariously funny, and this is shown not only in his actions but in his writing style too. No matter what happens, he is always cheerful, and not in an annoying way either.

And although Gareth, in theory, has a much better life, you have no trouble at all understanding why it has often made him unhappy. Money does not make you happy and anyone who thinks it does is either mad or Scottish. How can money make you feel better if you think you’ve just let the country down? You can’t buy your team a trophy (this book was written before the invention of Manchester City. And if buying trophies were possible, I’d like to think Ryan Giggs would have bought one for Wales). And I’m not just talking about that penalty. Or any of the other three Gareth has missed. He’s a very sensitive man and a lot has happened to him. And he’s a brilliant writer too.

He’s also a really lovely man. I wrote to him a few months ago and he replied right in the middle of Middlesbrough’s relegation battle. Can you imagine Alex Ferguson or Chelsea’s latest manager (I know what his name is, Carlo Ancelotti, however there’s no guarantee he’ll still be there by the time I get around to posting my review) doing this? Well, I wouldn’t mind putting them into a relegation battle so we can find out…

And one more thing. The first two words of the book are ‘Mitcham Station’. Is there any better way to start a book than by naming a railway station that technically doesn’t exist anymore? The station has been rebuilt as a tram station, with two platforms served approximately every three minutes. Very different from the station described by Gareth and Andy, with its one platform and one train every half-hour. But it used to be a railway station and now it’s not a railway station, so it’s a disused railway station, isn’t it? And there is nothing in the world nicer than a book with two lovely protagonists (you know what I mean!) that’s all about football and disused railway stations. (Except maybe Pride and Prejudice, but I’m sure Jane Austen would have mentioned them if she could.)