BROMLEY FC fan and author Dave Roberts has penned a new book on the beautiful game and our obsession with it.

Roberts has followed up the huge success of ‘The Bromley Boys’ by writing ’32 Programmes’.

The author has bought a programme at every football match he’s ever attended, from Fulham v Man Utd in 1964 to Bromley v AFC Hornchurch in 2008.

‘32 Programmes’ tells the story of how Robers made the selection of his most important programmes and how the process brought back a flood of nostalgia for simpler times.

It is a tale of youthful football obsession, crushes on disinterested girls, rubbish jobs and trying to impress skinheads.

But most of all, it is the story of a man’s life and loves.

Former Charlton fans’ director BEN HAYES, also a fellow Bromley supporter, gives his verdict for News Shopper online.

THE set up for this book is that an obsessive programme collector is told by his wife he can’t take all of his 1,134 football programmes with him to the United States and has to select a small box full that is all he is allowed to take with him.

The 31 (yes 31) programmes he selects are then beautifully used as a device to tell the story of his life through the years he was collecting them.

Those that grew to like the slightly odd Roberts from his first book, The Bromley Boys, will enjoy this explanation of where he went next and not just the football matches he watched.

Quite how he went from working on the production line at British Leyland (after some other dead end jobs) to a career as an advertising writer is never quite explained.

But the rest of his early life and odd choices he makes are well told and with no lack of self-realisation as to just how much of weirdo he was.

The stories of the actual games, from England internationals and Cup finals to Division Four local derbies, and the journey’s to them with an ever changing cast of characters often even more strange than Roberts are very well told.

Anyone who’s ever tried to get to games around the country will empathise with Roberts when after hours hitchhiking in the rain to Southampton to see his idol George Best play for Fulham he arrives late, just in time to see the Irishman trudging off the pitch having just been given a red card.

Being Roberts, he hopes that he has the consolation of seeing the first ever red card as they had been introduced for the first time that day.

And being Roberts, he also lets us know Best was beaten to this honour by David Wagstaffe of Blackburn Rovers.

There is a real twist in the tail at the end of the book but that just makes it even more of a worthwhile read.

If you are having to select from a pile of paperbacks as to which you should take with you on holiday, this is one you should definitely keep.

’32 Programmes’ by Dave Roberts is published by Bantam Press and is priced £12.99.

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