BLIND Faith was the name of rock music's first ever supergroup in 1969, featuring Eric Clapton, Stevie Winwood and Ginger Baker.

But in Bromley, blind faith of a different kind was gripping 14-year old Dave Roberts of Langley Park School.

Despite the fact his beloved Bromley FC was experiencing its worst ever season and would finish bottom of the Isthmian League after losing nearly every game, Dave eagerly attended every home and away match in the vain hope that results would improve.

Dave and his family moved away in 1975 to live in New Zealand, but the black humour of supporting the hapless Bromley team of 1969-70 has obviously stuck in his mind.

Now, some 30 years later, the author's gift to his former home town is this hilarious and delightfully nostalgic local-interest book "The Bromley Boys".

Bromley's football team is much more successful today, but I nevertheless feel certain present-day supporters of the Lillywhites, and football fans everywhere, will instinctively understand and enjoy this memoir of madcap devotion to the lost cause which was the Bromley team of 1969-70.

Indeed there must be many News Shopper readers who can still remember the Bromley FC players who were Dave's schoolboy heroes, such as "Postman" Pat Brown, "Gasmask" Gaston, Alan Stonebridge and Ginger Warman (not Baker).

What was it like to be growing up in Bromley in the late 1960s?

Football may be the primary focus of this book, but the author engagingly broad-brushes other adolescent themes.

Puppy love (fancying your best friend's sister and Una Stubbs on the telly), school bullies (perfect recapture of schoolboy slang of the period) and playing football in Norman Park on Sundays (for a team Hayesford Park Reserves that surely rivalled Bromley FC for the title of worst football team in Britain) all get a mention.

In a book which gave me several laugh-out-loud moments, I must confess I especially liked seeing the montage of ticket-stubs from away games that young Dave attended in 1969-70.

Yes, he travelled to see Bromley lose at Clapton, at Enfield, at Hendon.

And with the aid of his scrapbook and his bottle of Gloy glue, he faithfully kept detailed records afterwards - results and scorers, attendance figures, match reports, etc - as all schoolboys do.

In modern-day parlance, we would call Dave an "anorak", a fond term to describe all collectors and hoarders of memorabilia, statistics and the like.

However, as we learn when we read "The Bromley Boys" - it is one of many amusing little nuggets of nostalgia in the book - Dave in 1969-70 was not an "anorak". Instead, he was a "sheepskin jacket".

"The Bromley Boys" is written by Dave Roberts and published by Portico.