———–AVAILABLE NOW————
I WAS HOOKED 
Green Grass, Fried Onions & Pipe Smoke – Your First Match
Edited by Derek Hammond & Gary Silke
Paperback: 172 pages     Pub date: 5 October 2026 
ISBN-13: 978-1068700941     Size: 148 x 210mm
RRP: £16.00

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.

Author note

‘Nostalgia gurus’ Hammond & Silke are the authors of Got, Not Got, runner-up in the BSBA Football Book of the Year 2012, and the following series of books. Copywriter/editor Derek has written for the NME, FourFourTwo, Time Out and BBC Radio. Designer and journalist Gary founded The Fox, one of the UK’s first and longest-running football fanzines. Now the publishers at Conker Editions.