British Football’s Greatest Grounds One hundred must-see football venues By Mike Bayly Release date: 08th November, 2020 Publisher: Pitch Publishing List Price: £30 Our Price: £22.50 You Save: £7.5 (25%) Buy Now

In May 2013, sandwiched between thousands of fellow Underground commuters, Mike Bayly was reading a newspaper article about Nantwich Town, then in the Northern Premier League, when a photograph of the club’s main stand caught his attention. “I wouldn’t mind going there to watch a match,” Bayly thought to himself. A germ of an idea took root. “What if there were a bucket list, a holy grail…of the top 100 British football grounds to visit? Which ones would be on it? Why would they be on it?” Mike Bayly had had an epiphany: he decided to answer those questions and write a book about it. He started a blog, got himself on radio, attracted publicity from the FA and the Football Supporters Federation and was able to ask supporters to vote for their top five grounds; by the time his poll closed in 2014, he had received almost 16,000 votes. Bayly didn’t want “a book about the biggest, the prettiest or the oldest” and so he spent six years travelling to the most scenic, dramatic, atmospheric, historic and quirky grounds in the land, successfully adhering to his brief. The result of his research is a stunningly beautiful, over-sized, ‘must-keep’ photographic and written record of the nation’s 100 greatest grounds – presented in reverse order. We have grounds shoehorned into a disused quarry, acres of moss-covered corrugated roofs atop stands housing no more than 100 people, spectacular sea views from behind the goal, grassy banks where a handful of souls appear glued to the action in front of them. There are plenty of churches towering over smaller grounds, goalposts that could do with a lick of paint, striking mountainous backdrops, grounds buried at the foot of steep valleys and statues, old and modern. Each entry – and yes, some of the bigger grounds do feature, but by no means all – is accompanied by a potted history of the ground and club that plays, (or in some cases, used to play) there. Many of the football clubs based at attractively-located venues, or at grounds shared with cricket clubs, or set in the middle of a wood also act as de facto community hubs. They may still have tip-up wooden seats, or floodlights no brighter than the torch setting on your phone, but these grounds harbour a sense of togetherness which makes them all worth visiting. A cracking book that fans of any age would love as a Christmas present.