El Jarvo wrote:
Bonzette wrote:
I have just finished reading The Perry Boys - Ian Hough. A book given to me last year but only just got round to reading.
Brilliant read, but then he is an academic now, isn't he? Tails off dramatically though, as if he'd done everything between the ages of 9 and 17 or summat, and then is suddenly remembering it all in his early 40's. The attention to sheer detail is phenomenal though. Some of the paragraphs about clothes are written with such, well, passion, to say the least. You could suffocate at the pace of it all.
Makes a very clever point though, that the Scousers and Mancs probably hate each other cos they're actually soooo very much alike, but are just afraid to admit it! 
Anyone from the South could've told them that years ago!! 
He is indeed - I thought he told it well though, you know, without the exaggeration and romantic notion that books like these can often lean towards. Was impressed by that.
Tis true about the definition between the Mancs and Scousers - not all a bed of high quality fashion, raving, and music.....liked the brutal honesty of the flip side which was a breeding ground for heavy thieving, serious drugs and gun crime and gangs that were also a result of this way of life - especially in the north-west.
Think you have to have emotional intelligence to be able to sift through the interesting and ever lasting legacy of the casual boy culture and it's influence in football, also weighed up against the reality of the lasting negative effects it also left with the likes of Manchester and Liverpool as cities and the communities within those cities.
A lot more complicated than a simple north/ south divide (don't think it's really about that at all to be honest) - this book is more about the great and life changing times in football off the pitch but addressing at the same time the positive and honest consequences of this football culture in the north-west of England, specifically.
