[Book Review] ROAR of the Crowd

I have a confession to make: I’ve never been able to comprehend people’s obsession with football statistics. Ground hoppers I sort of understand. At least they get to visit new grounds and watch games. What’s the point, not to mention fun, in keeping statistics?

Once, an acquaintance proudly showed me folders full of results that he’d been religiously updating for over thirty years. Whilst I was fascinated by his dedication – typically I don’t manage to update my club’s fixtures calendar after the first couple of weeks of the season – I simply couldn’t see how anyone could consider this as a fun way to fill his spare time.
Given all that, I wasn’t exactly overjoyed when I was told to review David Ross’ ‘The ROAR of the crowd’, a book that promises an analysis of over 100 years of attendance statistics of Scottish football.

Yet, once I forced myself to get down and start reading it, I was actually very pleasantly surprised. Rather than a dreary trudge from one statistic to another that I had half expected this to be, this is quite an enjoyable and interesting read.

There are two elements which particularly stand out. The first is a number of black and white photos from various eras. These are intelligently linked with the text and help portray fans’ attitudes much better than words ever could. The grainy nature of most of these photos is rather endearing and amplify the romantic notions attached to the early days of the game. The shot on the front cover of the book is typical of all this.

Then there are the brief match reports from each Scottish club’s best attended game ever. Not only has Ross undertaken an enormous amount of research to compile these reports but he also writes them with the same passion that Simon Inglis reserves for football stadiums. I’ve absolutely fallen in love with the sub-category reserved to defunct clubs, often picking off a club at random and absolutely delighting in the lovingly written report.

Focusing on these two areas would, however, be doing a disservice to the rest of the book. Ross is an intelligent writer whose analysis is lucid and objective, blowing away many myths and offers genuine insight about Scottish football. There are occasional offhand comments, such as one instance where he asks readers who have more accurate statistics to contact him via his website – that should have been tidied up yet these are offset by the overall singular design of the book.

In a market saturated by boring player biographies, ‘The ROAR of the Crowd’ is a little gem that, sadly, won’t receive the recognition that it deserves. There certainly can’t be much better books about Scottish football around. David Ross, you’ve made stattos the world over proud.

Typical Quote: “Look at it another way, fifty years ago it took the worst supported club an entire season to match one average crowd of the best supported club. Today it would take the worst supported club twelve years.”

This review was originally featured on squarefootball.net on the 1st January 2006.