“The Damned Poppies?”

The hilarious news that author Steve Pitts has written an account of Gazza’s 39 days at Rockingham Road immediately got us thinking whether the book will be in the same vein as “the Damned United”, covering Cloughie’s 44 days at Leeds?

• Will there be Gazza’s inner monologue where he rants at the memory of Kevin Wilson, who had indelibly left his mark at the Club? If so, we hope it is a good deal more coherent than his outer monologues!

• Will he order all the players to throw all their medals (!) into the bin because they’ve never won them fairly? Or in this case, at all!

• Will his conflicts with such strong-willed, highly decorated international players as Will Gourlay and Stefan Morley be written with the same powerful verve, and ear for earthy dialogue?

• Will Gazza come across as a footballing megalomaniac, utterly convinced of his own brilliance, even in the face of abject failure, or just another washed up Geordie stereotype?

• Will Gazza’s drunken, rambling outburst against Imraan, where he continually refers to him as “The Doctor” make it into the story, or be considered too far fetched?

• Will he manage to avoid falling off the team coach this time?

So many questions!

Alas, I fear the only similarity between the two stories will be that the protagonists in each story enjoy a bevy. One of them went on to win almost everything in the game, whilst we’ll all just be glad if the other one lives into his fifties.