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The Longest Winter: A Season with England’s Worst Ever Football Team Hardcover – November 15, 2022

by Mark Hodkinson (Author)
4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 30 ratings
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In 1973-74, Britain was in meltdown. The Arab-Israeli War had sent energy prices soaring. Petrol was scarce. Offices were limited to a temperature of 17C and power cuts were frequent. A three-day working week came in as inflation took hold and miners and other workers went on strike. The northern mill town of Rochdale suffered more than most. Its cotton industry was on shut-down in the face of cheap imports, and the football team was a mirror image of the town - tired, defeated, clinging to life. The Rochdale team of 1973-74 are considered the worst to play in the Football League. They finished bottom of the third division, winning just twice in 46 league matches. They closed the season with a 22-game winless run and played one home match in front of the lowest-ever post-war crowd. That season 32 players played for the team, many of them drafted in from amateur or Sunday league clubs. The Longest Winter is as much a piece of forensic social history as it is a sports book. It evokes the smells, textures and moods of the early 1970s.
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Previous page
  1. Print length
    304 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Pitch Publishing Ltd
  4. Publication date
    November 15, 2022
  5. Dimensions
    5.43 x 1.1 x 8.5 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1801501572
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1801501576
  8. See all details
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The Amazon Book Review
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Mark Hodkinson is an experienced investigative journalist and author who has written for The Times for two decades. He has also contributed to The Observer, The Guardian, FourFourTwo and GQ. He has published several acclaimed football books, including Blue Moon: Down Among the Dead Men with Manchester City and Believe in the Sign, long-listed for the William Hill award. His most recent football book is the critically acclaimed The Overcoat Men.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Pitch Publishing Ltd (November 15, 2022)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 304 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1801501572
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1801501576
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.43 x 1.1 x 8.5 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 30 ratings

About the author

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Mark Hodkinson

Mark Hodkinson

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Mark Hodkinson is an experienced journalist and author, having written for The Times for two decades, three years as a columnist. He has also contributed to The Observer, The Guardian, Word, FourFourTwo, GQ, Daily Mirror and others.

He has published several acclaimed books, including ‘Blue Moon: Down Among the Dead Men with Manchester City’ (Penguin Random House) which is regularly cited as a football classic and ‘Believe in the Sign’, long-listed for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year. His next football book is The Longest Winter - a Season with England's Worst Ever Football Team.

His last, The Overcoat Men, received great critical acclaim. His debut novel, The Last Mad Surge of Youth, was nominated as Q’s ‘novel of the year’ in 2009. His most recent novel is That Summer Feeling.

He owns Pomona Books (www.pomonauk.co.uk) and has published titles by Simon Armitage, Bob Stanley, Barry Hines, Ian McMillan, Ray Gosling, David Gedge, Stuart Murdoch (of Belle and Sebastian), Mark Lanegan and many more. He also commissioned and edited the biography ‘JD Salinger: A Life Raised High’ later made into a film starring Nicholas Hoult and published in the United States by Penguin Random House.

Mark has produced and presented various documentaries for BBC Radio 4, including ‘JD Salinger, Made In England’, about the writer’s time spent in Devon during WWII; ‘Punk, the Pistols and the Provinces’ which looked at the impact of punk in the regions; 'In Search of Barney Bubbles', a biography of the seminal album sleeve artist; and 'Walter Kershaw: Britain's First Street Artist?.' His most recent documentary for BBC Radio 4 is ‘So Many Books, So Little Time’, from which spawned the much-heralded book. 'No One Round Here Read Tolstoy: Memoirs of a Working-Class Reader'.

A keen musician, Mark has played in bands supporting the likes of The Stone Roses, Pulp and The Wedding Present. He still writes and records music as Black Sedan (www.blacksedan.info).

Customer reviews

4.2 out of 5 stars
4.2 out of 5
30 global ratings

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Nuno Sameiro
5.0 out of 5 stars Great book
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 21, 2023
Verified Purchase
Rochdale longest winter what a story, love its!
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CBS
4.0 out of 5 stars 1970s Noir Social History
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 28, 2023
Verified Purchase
This is a very good book. It is an evocative, atmospheric, portrayal of a time (winter 1973/74) and place (Rochdale, north of Manchester). It is both social history and an account of the struggles of Rochdale AFC in the Third Division of the English Football League. I was 15 in 1973 and remember vividly most aspects of the portrait that Mark Hodkinson paints. For a reader of my age, and for anyone interested in the ordinary working-class life of the early 1970s, it's great stuff. This, from page 244, is representative of the whole book:

"Tuesday, 5 February 1974, the day after the motorway coach bombing, is considered one of the bleakest in modern British history. The country was in deep recession. The government was in disarray. Inflation was running at nearly 10 per cent. The three-day working week was in place. Miners had announced another national strike. Petrol was running out. And bombs were being detonated across England. Supporters of Rochdale thought it was fitting that the worst day in the club's history should fall on such a wretched day."

The "wretched day" was also the occasion of Rochdale's depressing home loss to Cambridge United -- the game seen in retrospect as the nadir of the club's worst season. Rochdale played 46 matches in the 1973/74 season: wins, 2; losses, 27; draws 17. The final 22 matches were winless. The club's ground and broken-down 'stadium' were at a place called Spotland. Everything was tawdry, shabby and done on a shoestring. Fred Ratcliff -- relatively wealthy, self-made man -- was club chairman, and sort-of mafioso, completely dominating the Board and the other directors. Walter Joyce was the new team manager, with experience only of youth teams, brought on board in 1973 because he cost not very much. Joyce was competitive and well-meaning, but also naive. Influenced by his limited experience, he believed too much in the value of youth and natural athleticism. One of his first moves was to dump the existing small cadre of hardened 25-to-33-year-old lower-division professionals on Rochdale's books, and replace them with 'kids'. The results were predictable.

As well as Ratcliff and Joyce, in Mr Hodkinson's book we meet a host of the other 'personalities' inhabiting the dead-beat world of Rochdale and its football club. Most prominent is Cyril Smith MP, larger than life at about 300 pounds and, with hindsight, a sinister, evil, closet paedophile. The employers of the time -- mills, factories, asbestos plant -- are well described. Turner Brothers Asbestos (TBA), employing 3,000 people, was -- even in 1974 -- a scandal in terms of disregard of its employees' health and well-being. This points to another great difference between the modern era and that of the 1970s. We routinely complain now about 'health and safety gone mad'. However, when we see in this book just how hazardous life was back then -- asbestos, smoking, hooliganism, pitch violence, absent medical care for players, terrorism, abuse, no seat-belts in cars, and on, and on -- it tends to justify modern carefulness and risk-aversion.

The format of The Longest Winter is straightforward. The chapters tell the story of the football season chronologically. Each chapter comprises ten to fifteen 1-3-page sections separated by asterisk delimiters. These alternate in content: football, social history, football, social history..... The football is mean and tawdry; the social history, very good. The rigid alternation does become a bit predictable and wearisome but, in the round, it's a very good snapshot of a poor, working-class, North-of-England society in the depressed 1970s, viewed through the lens of the local football club.

At the end, with Rochdale duly relegated to the Fourth Division, we find that manager Walter Joyce stayed on for another two seasons. That wouldn't be allowed to happen today. Mr Hodkinson leaves us with a sort of 'what happened to....' all the players and officials of the infamous season. These are always a bit depressing, if bitter-sweet. There is no index which, given the large number of characters who figure in the book, is unfortunate. A positive, for me, is the attractive hard-cover (without dust-cover) presentation of the book itself.

Overall, I would characterise The Longest Winter as a revealing slice of '1970s noir', by default shabby and depressing, but good social history. Four-and-a-half stars and recommended.
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210 to wembley
5.0 out of 5 stars Up The Dale
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 9, 2023
Verified Purchase
Fascinating view of Dales worst ever season (up until this one) I can’t help thinking a follow up is ready to be written as even in 73-74 Rochdale didn’t lose their Football League status but as I speak we are 5 points from safety and look doomed to join Oldham in the national league.A great read but I don’t recall too many wearing clockwork orange outfits in Rochdale centre!
One person found this helpful
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mr j l barber
5.0 out of 5 stars A must read for all football fans
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 28, 2022
Verified Purchase
An excellent book detailing the least successful season ever by a lower league team. It's set against the background of the economic and social situation in Rochdale and the country in the early seventies.
As a fan it absolutely gripped me from start to finish.
3 people found this helpful
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Robert Jolley
5.0 out of 5 stars Great read excellent research
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 8, 2022
Verified Purchase
This is a really good book Takes you back to the 70s and makes you think about the social and economic times too.
2 people found this helpful
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