Rugby union has undergone immense change in the past two decades - introducing a World Cup, accepting professionalism and creating a global market in players - yet no authoritative English-language general history of the game has been published in that time. Until now. A Game for Hooligans brings the game's colourful story up to date to include the 2007 World Cup. It covers all of the great matches, teams and players but also explores the social, political and economic changes that have affected the course of rugby's development. It is an international history, covering not only Britain and France but also the great rugby powers of the southern hemisphere and other successful rugby nations, including Argentina, Fiji and Japan. Contained within are the answers to many intriguing questions concerning the game, such as why 1895 is the most important date in both rugby-union and rugby-league history and how New Zealand became so good and have remained so good for so long. There is also a wealth of anecdotes, including allegations of devil-worship at a Welsh rugby club and an account of the game's contribution to the Cuban Revolution. This is a must-read for any fan of the oval ball.

They have names like Barmy Bernie, Daft Donald, and Steamin' Sammy. They like lager (in huge quantities), the Queen, football clubs (especially Manchester United), and themselves. Their dislike encompasses the rest of the known universe, and England's soccer thugs express it in ways that range from mere vandalism to riots that terrorize entire cities. Now Bill Buford, editor of the prestigious journal Granta, enters this alternate society and records both its savageries and its sinister allure with the social imagination of a George Orwell and the raw personal engagement of a Hunter Thompson.

Hooligan-turned-acclaimed author Dougie Brimson is the UK's most respected authority on soccer hooligan-ism. Now, in a book written specifically for an American audience, he tells the astonishing story of the rampant hooliganism among European soccer fans and how it could spread to the United States. Written in the raw, in-your-face style that has won considerable acclaim in Europe--the Daily Mail (London) said Brimson had written probably the best book ever on soccer violence--March of the Hooligans is a powerfully intimate look at what hooliganism has become and where it is headed.

We've all got two families: the one we're born with, and the one we choose ourselves. Heiko hasn't finished high school. His father is an alcoholic. His mother left. His housemate organizes illegal dogfights. He works in his uncle's gym, one frequented by bikers and skinheads. He definitely isn't one of society's winners, but he has his chosen family, the pack of soccer hooligans he's grown up with. His uncle is the leader, and gradually Heiko has risen in the ranks, until he's recognized in the stands of his home team and beyond the stadium walls, where, after the game, he and his gang represent their city in brutal organized brawls with hooligans from other localities. Philipp Winkler's stunning, widely acclaimed novel won the prize for best debut and was a finalist for the most prestigious German book award. It offers an intimate, devastating portrait of working-class, post-industrial urban life on the fringes and a universal story about masculinity in the twenty-first century, with a protagonist whose fear of being left behind has driven him to extremes. Narrated with lyrical authenticity by Heiko himself, it captures the desperation and violence that permeate his world, along with the yearning for brotherhood.

Rugby fans will delight in this astonishing collection of outlandish stories from the past 150 years of the game. Here you’ll find, among many other curious events, the Irish international who arranged his marriage in order to play against England, the team of top soccer players who beat their rugby counterparts at their own game, the day the entire Wales team was sent off, and when in an astonishing turn of events underdog Japan trimphed and beat South Africa (and who doesn't love an underdog). The tales in this book are bizarre, fascinating, and, most importantly, true. Revised, redesigned and updated for 2016, this book makes the perfect gift for the rugby obsessive in your life. Word count: 45,000

Andy Nicholls is known to every football intelligence officer in Britain. For twenty-five years, he was one of the most active hooligans in the country, a leading figure among the violent followers of Everton FC Classified as a Category C thug, the worst kind, he amassed more than twenty arrests and has been deported from Belgium, Iceland and Sweden. His terrace fanzine was closed down by the authorities and he was banned from every ground in the UK. Revealing the truth behind the vicious knife attacks of the so-called County Road Cutters and the bitter Merseyside and Manchester rivalries that left scores injured, SCALLY caused a storm of controversy on first publication. It is widely acknowledged as the most revealing, most shocking book ever written about soccer gang culture.

The Game of Our Lives is a masterly portrait of soccer and contemporary Britain. Soccer in the United Kingdom has evolved from a jaded, working-class tradition to a sport at the heart of popular culture, from an economic mess to a booming entertainment industry that has conquered the world. The changes in the game, David Goldblatt shows, uncannily mirror the evolution of British society. In the 1980s, soccer was described as a slum game played by slum people in slum stadiums. Such was the transformation over the following twenty-five years that novelists, politicians, poets, and bankers were all declaring their footballing loyalties. At one point, the Palace let it be known that the queen -- like her mother, Prince Harry, the chief rabbi, and the archbishop of Canterbury -- was an Arsenal fan. Soccer permeated the national life like little else, an atavistic survivor decked out in New Britain flash, a social democratic game in a cutthroat, profit-driven world. From the goals, to the players, to the managers, to the money, Goldblatt describes how the English Premier League (EPL) was forged in Margaret Thatcher's Britain by an alliance of the big clubs -- Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester United, Chelsea, Tottenham Hotspur -- the Football Association, and Rupert Murdoch's Sky TV. Goldblatt argues that no social phenomenon traces the momentous economic, social, and political changes of post-Thatcherite Britain in a more illuminating manner than soccer, and The Game of Our Lives provides the definitive social history of the EPL -- the most popular soccer league in the world.

A gripping and authentic World War II naval adventure by a master storyteller The Hooligans fictionalizes the little-known but remarkable exploits of “The Hooligan Navy” that fought in the Pacific theatre of World War II. Loosely-organized in fast moving squadrons, PT (patrol torpedo) boats were the pesky nemesis of the formidable Japanese navy, dubbed “the mosquito fleet” and “devil boats” for their daring raids against warships, tankers, and transport ships. After the Pearl Harbor raid plunges America into war, young surgical resident Lincoln Anderson enlists in the Navy medical corps. His first deployment comes in August 1942 at Guadalcanal, when after a brutal sea battle and the landing of Marines on the island, Anderson finds himself triaging hundreds of casualties under relentless Japanese air and land attacks. But with the navy short of doctors, soon Anderson is transferred to serve aboard a PT boat. From Guadalcanal to the Solomon Islands to the climactic, tide-turning battle of Leyte Gulf, Anderson and the crew members of his boat confront submarines and surface ships, are attacked from air by the dreaded Kawanishi flying boats, and hunted by destroyers. In the end, Anderson must lead a division of boats in a seemingly-impossible mission against a Japanese battleship formation—and learn the true nature of his character. Informed by P. T. Deutermann’s own experience as a commander of a patrol gunboat in Vietnam, The Hooligans is first-rate military adventure fiction.

If all sports are really about war, then rugby is a heart-thumping epic of bayonet charges and hand-to-hand fighting. In Memoirs of a Rugby-Playing Man, bestselling author Jay Atkinson describes his thirty-five year odyssey in the sport-from his rough and rowdy days at the University of Florida, through the intrigue of various foreign tours, club championships, and all star selections, up to his current stint with the freewheeling Vandals Rugby Club out of Los Angeles. Jay has played in more than 500 matches, for which he's suffered three broken ribs, a detached retina, a fractured cheekbone and orbital bone, four deadened teeth, and a dislocated ankle. Written in the style of Siegried Sassoon's Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man, Atkinson's book explains why it was all worth it--the sum total of his violent adventures, and the valuable insights he has gained from them.

After playing rugby, one of the most physically challenging games you can play, both sides shake hands and walk off the field togetherand then sit down to a pint and a meal. The Hooligans Table showcases the spirit of camaraderie for which rugby is known around the world and across the table. Author David Martin brings over thirty years of playing rugby and going to the pub after rugby games to the writing of this book. He has included recipes such as cheddar and stout soup, beer can chicken, the hangover cure sandwich, and cowboy cookiesall of which come from players, coaches, friends, and pubs where rugby is on the menu as well. In addition to providing the recipes for the definitive rugby meal, this collection also offers energetic stories of games and meals; it invites you to sit down with other rugby players at The Hooligans Table. In the spirit of rugby, everyones invited; discover some great ways to create your own hooligans table.