Nick Hornby, Mal Peet and Tom Palmer are already well-known for their football stories. But this terrific anthology also includes stories by Tomáš Rosický, Vincent Kompany and Curtis Davies all of whom are better known on the field. All the stories and poems feature the imaginary team of Shelby Town, and each gives a useful insight into life through a footballing lesson. In A Clean Sheet by Vincent Kompany, Ollie learns a lesson about school survival from a Shelby Town player who visits school while Paul Cookson delivers a poem as Half-Time Team Talk.
Big match writing from the best in the game...Billy's telling tall stories about his "e;famous"e; grandfather, Raphael suspects his coach of murder, Tom and Jerry surprise a talent scout and Katy gets picked to play for England. It's all going on at Shelby Town! A collection of short stories and poems about football, by a fantastic line-up of children's authors, football writers and players.
Tom Watt is best known as Lofty from EastEnders, a role he played for three years. Since then he has appeared in West End hits, national tours and films that include Patriot Games, Sherlock Holmes and Small Island. Tom now primarily writes and broadcasts about football and has written for The Observer, The Times, The Daily Mail, The Evening Standard and The Sportsman. He also hosts a weekly phone-in show for Arsenal TV and participates regularly in Radio 5's Fighting Talk. Most recently he wrote A Beautiful Game: Football Through the Eyes of the World's Greatest Players and ghostwrote David Beckham's million-selling autobiography My Side. He has devised a football-based literary and numeracy resource for schools entitled The Jags. Tom lives with his wife and son in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire. Mark Long lives in north London and supports Chelsea FC. He studied for a BA in illustration at Plymouth University (the art college was in Exeter) and then worked as a secondary school Art teacher in Essex. After a few years he decided to concentrate on his drawing full time. He still enjoys working with young people and regularly leads workshops in schools and museums. He mostly works for newspapers and magazines, Football Shorts is his first book.
