Sporting Heroes of Essex and East London 1960-2000: Bobby Moore and Graham Gooch - Hardcover

It will captivate anyone who loves sport, Essex or the East End. Compelling from start to finish. --Mike Hallowell, The Shields Gazette

This is a fantastic book which all football and cricket fans will enjoy reading. --Tony Cottee

The Links between Moore and Gooch are very close, Author Dr Phil Stevens contrasts their careers with the evolving post-war world and also focuses on the lives of all sporting enthusiasts who make the County of Essex such a rich area in sporting culture. --Official E-News from the Essex County FA

A curious social history of Essex which seeks to explaine how two of its greatest sporting stars were unearthed. --Patrick Kidd- The Times and The Wisden Cricketer Magazine

Bobby Moore and Graham Gooch are two of the genuinely great sporting figures of the post-war period. Moore s exquisitely-timed tackles and precision passing - Gooch s crunching on-drives and attacking style are clear images in the minds of all sports lovers. Moore was the iconic figure of the 60s and 70s, while Gooch s long career spanned the two decades between 1970 and 2000. Our two heroes were born just a few miles apart in the area where East London meets metropolitan Essex. Both went to school in Leytonstone, a tough working class borough, close to the East End. As emerging young players, Moore and Gooch both had the benefit of strong and supportive families, and were extremely proud of their working class background and stayed close to their roots. The book is the first to compare and contrast the careers of these two sporting greats within a rapidly changing social context. If the book is a study of the sporting lives of Bobby Moore and Graham Gooch, it is also the story of thousands of local football and cricket enthusiasts in the area who have helped to make the sporting culture of East London/Essex so rich and distinctive. The book includes amusing anecdotes and interesting stories from individuals and clubs, and traces the history of football and cricket in East London and Essex at all levels in the forty years between1960-2000. West Ham United and Essex CCC share a common sporting heritage. Bobby Moore played cricket for Essex Youth as a boy, while Graham Gooch is a passionate West Ham fan and regularly trained with the Hammers at the peak of his career. The area that stretches out between Upton Park in the East End and Essex s headquarters at Chelmsford is a hotbed of local sport, and a place which has produced an extra-ordinary number of international sports figures of the very highest calibre. In addition to Moore and Gooch, sporting giants from the area include David Beckham, Dean Macey, Lennox Lewis, Sir Alf Ramsey, Nasser Hussein, Christine Ohorugu and Sir Trevor Brooking the list is endless. The book examines what is distinctive about the sporting culture of Essex/East London that enabled it to produce, not only Moore and Gooch, but a host of world class sports stars. The playing days of Moore and Gooch were golden years when both reached the very heights of sporting glory Moore captaining England to World Cup victory at Wembley in 1966, and Gooch scoring century after century against the West Indies, one of the most fearsome fast-bowling attacks in the history of cricket. But sporting lives are short-lived and, like all other international greats, both had to face the challenge of retirement. The book provides a fascinating account of the different ways Moore and Gooch faced their non-playing careers. Graham Gooch was generous enough to agree to be interviewed for the book. The interview took place at Fenners in Cambridge in June 2009 during the match between Essex and Cambridge University. His reflections provide the book with some fascinating insights into the state of the modern game. Billy Bragg s perceptive Foreword offers a genuinely local contribution to a book which is a tribute to Moore and Gooch, and to a truly remarkable sporting culture.