Tony Book. Mr Manchester City. Skip. One of our greats. Yet few fans have specific memories of him playing. Not necessarily because we didn’t see him play, just because he went about it so quietly. He wasn’t known for dashing overlaps or canny underlaps; flair or vision; passing or dribbling. And he certainly wasn’t known for his goals, though he did score four – or was it five – in his 315 games. Booky was a solid, tough-tackling right-back with a fair bit of pace, despite looking as if he should be on standby for a Dad’s Army XI.
When we were kids, City fans wanted to be Franny Lee, “King” Colin Bell or Mike “Buzzer” Summerbee. Nobody wanted to be Book. Yet his was the most remarkable story by far. Anthony Keith Book, who died this week aged 90, represented possibility. The triumph of hope over expectation. The ultimate football dream. Take an ageing brickie off the building site and turn him into a top-class footballer at an age when most players were thinking of retiring. The fact that he wasn’t phenomenally gifted made it all the more romantic.
