Daniel Gray
@d_gray_writer
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Newest book ‘Food of the Cods’. Word churner. Editor of @nutmegmagazine . Host of @WSC_magazine pod. York-grown Boro man living in Scotland.
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‘Few places feel as promising as the queue outside a chippy. This book ponders why…’
A one minute intro to my new book ‘Food of the Cods’, out October 12 and available for pre-order now in the usual places.
Warning: might make you fancy a chippy tea. It is Friday, mind…
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‘DADDY, WHY ARE THERE SO MANY BALD PEOPLE AT THIS MATCH?’ My daughter continues her mission to get me smacked in the face.
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Just pumped up this little marvel. Already curled a beauty right into the cat’s basket. Busy afternoon ahead.
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‘Daddy, I’m the only Middlesbrough supporter at school and no-one else has even heard of George Friend.’ And in that moment my heart simultaneously swells with pride and shrivels with pain at what I have done.
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On the way in, a fella pointed at us and said to his kid: 'they're from the grimmest town in the north.' I dedicate the third goal to him.
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The problem with always letting your heart rule your head is you end up buying a York City turnstile at auction that you can’t fit through your gate and has anyone got a crane they can lend me? 🤦🏻♂️
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I wrote a few words after the game I was at last Saturday, Cowdenbeath v Edinburgh. A kind of match report/justification for my solo travels. I was going to leave those words right where they are to never be seen again, but looking back they capture why I love Scottish football.
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On the 4th day of Christmas my Pulis gave to me/four centre halves/three holding mids/two other fellas/and a striker isolated on his own forlornly pursuing long balls before being withdrawn on 67 minutes.
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Who knows what’ll happen next (‘whatever will be/will be…’), but that was up there with all the great Boro nights. The noise after the goal was almost beyond the comprehension of ears. Lads from Redcar, Bedale and Berwick Hills beating the billionaires. Proper, proper Boro.
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Absolutely delighted to announce that for just the second time in 30 years of going to football I just caught the ball.
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Good letter in today’s Times from a man who appears to be living in a Looney Tunes cartoon.
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A last goodbye to Bootham Crescent - excerpt video from my new book, ‘The Silence of the Stands: Finding the Joy in Football’s Lost Season’.
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Here’s to the dads that take and took us to the match.
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So sad to hear of Jimmy Armfield's passing. Here's my chapter about him in 'Saturday, 3pm'. Hard now to think of him in the past tense.
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Every time I go to non-league football I wonder why I bother with league football.
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Wow. And always nice to be called ‘Them’ by a newspaper from the country you live in.
Tomorrow's front page: Save us Roberto, you're our final hope!
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The proofs of my next book are in, a moment even more exciting than finding a fiver in an old pair of jeans. Final version with a very lovely cover out in November, just in time for you to ignore the World Cup and read about Workington and Cowdenbeath instead.
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On the train. Couple on the table next to me fell out just after Edinburgh. We’re now at Darlington and the atmosphere is so frosty that windows have iced over, the conductor is skiing in the vestibule area and a Cockney fella is selling hot roast chestnuts at the catering hatch.
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Another day, another game. Football, I bloody love you.
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New book alert🚨
Extra Time, the sequel to Saturday, 3pm. A collection of lyrical sweet-nothings whispered to late goals, local radio commentators, referees falling over & 47 other reminders of why we love football.
Out Oct 29 in shops, web or from me:
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*BREAKING NEWS* I’ve written a new book and it is published on October 4th. Here’s a short video about it:
@BloomsburySport
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Hibs, 5-2 up and playing some lovely football. Docherty tries a back heel that doesn’t quite come off. Then a voice from behind us: ‘TOO FANCY HIBS, TOO BLOODY FANCY.’ The kind of man who thinks that the Forth Bridge is a bit fussy and flavoured crisps are ‘a bit much’.
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For those craving signs of normality after all the horror, I’m happy to report that Middlesbrough FC under Jonathan Woodgate are still unspeakably shite.
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On 2 trains today I heard Reading fans slagging off my favourite part of earth. I know it’s far from heaven but Teesside means the world to some of us. When I was young and sparky I would’ve had a go at them. But now I’m 37 the result is writing in my phone (sorry to real poets):
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Finally got to an Italian match and it was every bit as magical as all those Saturday morning Gazzetta programmes promised. Wonderful to see Tony Dorigo’s Torino in action.
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Homely Fir Park. Hibs played as if football is painful drudgery. Motherwell still have, possibly, the best kit colours in football.
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“I’n so sorry for making you support them.”
“Me too, Dad, me too. And please comb your hair.”
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Here it is. The lovely cover, with image by
@HOMESofFOOTBALL
, of my new ‘un, out November 10th, available for pre-order in all the usual places.
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There’s no one true first day of the season any more, but as this is my team’s, here’s The First Day of the Season from ‘Saturday, 3pm’.
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Almost 30 years to the day since my Dad took me to a Boro match for the first time, what a thing it is to go now with him and my daughter. And autograph-hunting in 2018 as we did in 1988 too. A football club is a fine old thing to have in common.
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Still fits so well. Just need to slip into the trousers now and we’re there.
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Post Office.
Counter lady: 'Do you want a Prime Minister stamp?'
Me: 'As long as it's not Thatcher.'
Her: 'Everyone says that.'
Pleasing.
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7am: awoken by fingers tapping on my forehead. ‘Daddy, DADDY. Can I have a hotdog at half-time today?’
3.40pm: receive the following subtle message on the back of the programme.
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Part of the healing process from last night is to confess that during the warm-up, a Coventry shot careered into the concourse. I managed to chest it but on its way it had already taken out my pint. I will learn from this. Should’ve put the pint down and done a diving header.
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New book news! I’ve been eating copious amounts of chips and battered things so you don’t have to.
We are delighted to be publishing FOOD OF THE CODS: How Fish & Chips Made Britain by
@d_gray_writer
in October 2023; it is a richly entertaining celebration of Britain’s national dish and its delightful neon houses!
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It still clacks and counts. Musical.
The problem with always letting your heart rule your head is you end up buying a York City turnstile at auction that you can’t fit through your gate and has anyone got a crane they can lend me? 🤦🏻♂️
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‘Come Saturday, we pondered the empty stadiums with their quarantined goalmouths...’
A short video version of my
@NutmegMagazine
article, Silent Saturday, about football’s shutdown.
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Whitby by night. Some kind of magnificent conjuring trick.
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Very chuffed indeed that Silence of the Stands has been shortlisted for Football Book of the Year.
Announcing the shortlist for the
#SportsBookAwards
Geoff Neal Football Book of the Year, in association with the Football Writers' Association.
Congratulations and good luck to the nominees!
#SBA23
#ReadingForSport
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I love these back alley cobbles near my Mum’s. I think you only get them in York. I’ve heard them called Rosemary setts, slag paviours and scoria bricks. They were produced in Teesside blast furnaces, from the spoils of pig iron. Such beauty from toil. Yes, I need to stay in more
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Very chuffed indeed with this.
Congratulations to
@d_gray_writer
on being longlisted for the Telegraph
@sportsbookaward
CLOC Football Book of the Year for
#ExtraTime
@BloomsburySport
@theofficialfwa
!
#SBA21
#ReadingForSport
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Another cup defeat to that lot, then. But man alive were the stands boisterous. This town and team has its bold raging soul back. So many more good days and nights to come.
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Enjoying a 1993 issue of 90 Minutes magazine. This is exactly how I still imagine the Conference to be. It is the most brilliantly Conferencey Conference table possible, apart from lacking Barnet. Witton, Telford, Runcorn… beautiful.
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Very chuffed to have written my first ever
@WSC_magazine
Match of the Month, a favourite feature in the mag ever since I was a teenager sneakily reading it during Maths. Photos by the marvellous
@alanmccredie
, back in one our favourite haunts,
@CowdenbeathFC
.
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Climbing the Stairs into the Stand - a short video about a footballing delight from my new book, ‘Extra Time’:
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‘I got two cans of lager and a paper’: injured Boro captain Alan Kernaghan nips to a supermarket by the ground to avoid the tension of a promotion decider at Wolves. Tremendous.
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Never was post appreciated more. Some achievement to get this out by my mates
@WSC_magazine
. Well worth a few quid of your online ordering money.
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Raucous book launch underway here in the Barclay’s Tier 3 North town of Leith.
EXTRA TIME is a collection of lyrical sweet-nothings whispered to late goals, local radio commentators, referees falling over and 47 other reminders of why we love football.
Happy publication day
@d_gray_writer
!
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A week since visiting Joseph Marien Stadium and watching Union Saint-Gilloise. Immediately besotted with it. A dream. Of course, they’re knocking it down.
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A text from Mum to say the new book is on display in
@WaterstonesYork
is a lovely moment. Spent so much of my young days in there - albeit a different location in town - dreaming of such things. Good to have the Bootham Crescent pages near the old place too.
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A couple of empty hours in Aberdeen, time to check up on dear old Pittodrie.
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Delighted. So many years of watching Corrie and finally, a glimpse of Weatherfield County’s home ground.
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Edinburgh’s new shopping centre has lovely water features. In my daughter’s words “Who invented this? I’ve never seen a Boots with a stream.”
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It is such a thrill to be in the
@ObsMagazine
after all these years of reading it, and a privilege to be snapped eating chips by the great Murdo Macleod.
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2pm, Blackburn: God I love away days. Great little pub, this. August and the new season sun. Checking the fixtures; can I get to Bristol City away in a fortnight?
3.40pm, Blackburn: Jesus Christ, what an absolute heap of shite. How much have I spent to be here?
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Destroyed by my daughter’s adventurous young Hibernian side. Crushing.
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There’s always time in my afternoons for a walk around an empty football ground.
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My word, there is no greater win than the injury time win.
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No Forfar 4 East Fife 5, but what a handsome church Station Park is.
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There are streets that take you not only to a place, but to a hazy spell in time too. I walked beneath Bootham Bar in York this week. Fingers clicked and sent me backwards, as if that old gate were a door to another, happier room: once more was it the middle third of the 1990s.
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I had absolutely no idea about making this longlist until I watched this to find some new books I should read - incredibly chuffed to see Silence of the Stands pop up. Get in. And thanks to them,
@BloomsburySport
and
@DLuxAssociates
.
The
@WilliamHill
𝑺𝒑𝒐𝒓𝒕𝒔 𝑩𝒐𝒐𝒌 𝒐𝒇 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒀𝒆𝒂𝒓 𝑳𝒐𝒏𝒈𝒍𝒊𝒔𝒕 is here! 📢
From over 150 sports books entered, our reading panellists have whittled them down to reveal the top 1️⃣8️⃣ books that have made it into this year’s
#WHSBOTY23
longlist 👇
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I’m on the scrounge - have you a football-related photo of you and your Dad or Grandad I can use on one of my little Twitter book films? Free books to my favourite 3. Here’s tiny me and my Dad visiting the growing Riverside.
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Sad that was the last time we’ll see the Goliath crane on the way to a game. Blown to smithereens tomorrow. When a teenager I thought of it as a giant goalpost and loved spotting it through that corner of the ground before it was filled in. More Teesside industrial heritage lost.
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‘The final whistle shrills, hands clap and studs clack on cement floors. Supporters meander away in a directionless manner, their purpose suddenly lost. At the catering hatch, a woman wipes the surface clean. Football will sleep now until August.’
Coming soon in
@NutmegMagazine
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Really chuffed with this issue, my first as Editor from start to finish. So any references to ‘Patrick’ Thistle are my fault. I’d love some first timers to give it a try. Free pack of Space Raiders to anyone who does and isn’t happy.
Issue 17 is off to the printers.
Pre-order now to avoid disappointment.
👉
You can read the full contents here.
👉
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‘This book is for those people who look at a picture of, say, Maine Road and sigh with longing. It is for people who miss being told the hometown of a referee, and pine for miserable turnstile operators...’
In shops, online or direct from me
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Christmas ‘88. Note Dad bent over, possibly swearing at some impossible Scalextric corner join.
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My daughter's first day at school tomorrow. I've told her to put a heavy tackle in early doors, let them know they're in a game.
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The Silence of the Stands - a short video about the new book…
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Watch and RT to win a signed copy of my new book - name drawn 30/09/18 midday.
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I’m chuffed with how this, my first effort at editing and typesetting a whole book, has turned out. Lots of really enjoyable, escapist writing. Stories from China, India, Kosova, Brazil, Scotland, Spain and my own on Guernsey. Available from
@NBMScotland
:
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A little time in Inverness meant a little time in here.
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Back at Ayresome Park with my Dad for the first time since, to be precise, April 30th 1995. Where it all began. I still blame him now.
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Had a chance recently to chat with the Michelangelo of Middlesbrough, Steve Waller. Over a decade he rebuilt the original town - now mostly gone - in model form. He adds stories to the streets as people tell him them - sailors drowning in a pub, an armed robbery… Time travel.
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This week’s totally unnecessary purchase. Just look at grinning joyful Jack though, and those beautiful bridges. One on Teesside, one built by Teesside.
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My new
@NutmegMagazine
article about my turnstile is up on the
@guardian
site, and Homer the cat now needs an agent.
I bought a York City turnstile at auction. It’s the best £300 I’ve spent
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In Paris. So close to being allocated the Ceefax Football Page Suite again.
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‘The Silence of the Stands’ has arrived from the printer. I’ve already taken it for a romantic stroll among the silent stands of the Ďolíček… Published November 10th, available for pre-order now.
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And…we’re back. Let the nonsense that means everything begin again.
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Reunited with my Italia ‘90 tile, a thing of beauty. A rich man my grandad used to chauffeur, i.e. drive around while wearing a hat, brought it back for me from Italy, far as I remember.
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Another lovely little find in a book from a second-hand shop, this time
@Tillsbooks
: bus tickets from the same day in 1998, a few pages apart. A story within a story. Mainly a story of a work commute from Easter Road to West Mains, but still...
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We’re still bezzies.
Whatever happens tonight, Tony, we’ll always have Boothferry Park, 1991.
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The 50 delights in ‘Extra Time’: a count-up.
#1
: Local Radio Commentators
“The local commentator pulls you from the living room and drops you on the terrace. Vivid sketches from faraway towns fix sharp and clear behind your eyes...”
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The first of two documentaries I’ve been researching/writing about Scotland’s role in the slave trade airs this Tuesday at 9pm on BBC2 Scotland. A truly complex, often harrowing story to try and tell - I hope we got near to doing it justice.
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Blackburn v Man City, 2000, on Sky last night. Outstanding final day of the season radio scenes. Gone since the phone killed the Walkman.
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Saturday, 3.45pm. Come to me, oh sweet sweet macaroni pie. Make everything ok.
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