Who on Earth is Robin Friday, or rather, who was he? And why would anyone want to write about some bloke who played for English fourth division football club Reading in the 1970s, whose soccer career spanned just three years? Probably for just those reasons. Unlike biographies of more famous, but less-colourful, football characters, this work by Oasis bass-player Paul McGuigan and journalist Paolo Hewitt seeks to let us in on a little secret: there was this guy with long hair, a drug habit and an attitude who was one of the greatest footballers you never saw.
This is almost a story of a working-class kid with an extraordinary gift for football which he threw away in an orgy of booze, drugs and women. However, unlike other soccer rogues - Paul Gascoigne springs to mind - Friday's irresponsibility was tinged with menace, and no top-class club dared sign him.
He would disappear for days, drink and take drugs on the team bus, dance naked in night clubs, kiss policemen, and defecate in the opposition team's bath. But hey, he was charismatic and a brilliant footballer, so it was OK. Until one day, aged 25, he suddenly walked out on his second club, Cardiff City, and went back to being a roofer. Why, the book doesn't say.
Suddenly, it is 13 years later, and Friday is dead, and again we don't know why, just left to presume he finally overdid the intoxicants. And this is the book's disappointment. While it is a welcome approach to let those who knew him talk freely, I wanted to know more about Robin Friday, because despite his problems, I'd come to like him.
The verbatim extracts of interviews with Friday's family, friends and colleagues are interesting and often comical, but are spliced between newspaper match reports that become a little tiresome.
This may be a fond sojourn into the working-class world of British soccer in the 1970s, but it only touches on the Robin Friday story. Perhaps it was only meant to, allowing his football to be his legacy.