The Overcoat Men: How Two Unsung Heroes Staved Off the Bulldozers and Saved Their Football Club from Oblivion: How Two Unsung Heroes Thwarted a Secret Plan to Kill Off a Football Club - Softcover

Mark Hodkinson

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1785315250 ISBN 13: 9781785315251

Publisher: Pitch Publishing Ltd, 2019

Synopsis

The story of two men who almost single-handedly saved their football club from extinction. In the early 80s David Kilpatrick and Graham Morris spied architects' plans to turn Spotland, the home of their beloved, beleaguered Rochdale AFC, into a housing estate. They set about saving the club but first had to take on the alleged 'enemy within'. They worked tirelessly, persuading companies to write off debts while securing loans and donations, a tricky proposition when your club is bottom of the Football League. Meanwhile, the town of Rochdale was on its knees, the last of the cotton mills closing down. The limit of most fans' investment in their club is routinely the price of a season ticket. Directors often risk their houses and businesses, sometimes forfeiting marriages, families and their health in the name of their club. People such as Kilpatrick and Morris - moderately wealthy local businessmen - who serve on football club boards are the unseen, unsung heroes of football, even in the modern age.

About this title

Review

"It's a really rollicking story and it is also about the town, its people, culture, politics etc and the prevailing mood and atmosphere of the 1970s/early 1980s. I interviewed directors of other clubs and I've tried, where possible, to relate it across the whole of football. When I was younger I wasn't that bothered about how clubs were administered but I find it fascinating now, how all these: egos, hopes, collide. Why they do it. What they want to achieve. What it says about them. It's a secret world to most fans and I've enjoyed uncovering it. I know we tend to be very fatalistic at Dale but we were so lucky that these two men came along when they did. They brought with them the perfect mixture of diligence, pragmatism, charisma, application." --RochdaleAFC.com

About the Author

Mark Hodkinson is the author of Believe in the Sign (long-listed for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year), Blue Moon: Down Among the Dead Men with Manchester City and The Last Mad Surge of Youth (Q magazine's Novel of the Year). Mark has written for The Times for two decades, and has produced and presented documentaries for BBC Radio 4.

About this edition

• Publisher: Pitch Publishing Ltd
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 1785315250
• ISBN 13: 9781785315251
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256