Buy your copy now, and you can be the first kid in your street to own I WAS HOOKED. And the Old Football Ground Book of the Year makes a brilliant Christmas present!

It’s guaranteed to whisk you straight back to the 20th century – and the rather shabby old place you came to know as ‘home’…

Do you remember your big-match debut? The day you finally got the call, and made the step-up from park games and Match of the Day highlights to the thrilling adult world of a real football match? That first sight of the big green pitch. Your sticker-album heroes, in the flesh. The noise and the smell and the language a million miles from Subbuteo matches and comic strips.

I WAS HOOKED bombards you with shared memories that will bring flooding back all the emotions of your first experience of football. But just as great a gift are the hugely varied stories – the incredible, unfakable details – that enable you to relive the greatest game-changing day in the lives of other overexcited young fans.

Poignant, hilarious and heartbreaking in equal measure, I WAS HOOKED offers an insight into the uniquely eccentric yet strangely familiar experiences of 79 other football families – all with different homes, backgrounds, scarves and rituals. Everyday, legendary tales from the Lost World of Football.

Do you still yearn for those early days of real footballing heroes, proper tackles and wafting fried onions?

You’re not alone.

Features a huge range of wildly diverse first match experiences, all leading to lifetime addiction… A feelgood insight into football’s ultimate ‘rite of passage’ burned into every fan’s memory… Contributors covering 79 English and Scottish League clubs… Programmes from every match, favourite player graphics, fan photos and collectables… A feast of bittersweet nostalgia for ‘proper’ football, lost grounds and first football companions…

CLICK HERE for more information – and to order your copy of I WAS HOOKED for just £16!