A tale anyone who has ever played football can relate to, a tale any number of people could have written. But I'm glad it was Barney Ronay who actually did it. His version is funny, sharp, poignant, his ear for conversation acute. And his prose is at times blissful, filling his book with observations that lift it way above being just an accumulation of park football yarns... he makes you care for a bunch of footballing saddos, root for them, really hope they manage to pull it off

Resounds with matey banter. His descriptions of the actual games are hilarious, and his book has more insight into the pleasures, pain and the point of football than the combined autobiographies of an entire premiership squad

Hilarious ... affectionately captures the rites of passage of your average footy-mad guy

If Barney Ronay played football as well as he writes about it nobody would have heard of David Beckham

Michael writes about disaster, humiliation, rejection and ridicule - the hilarious truth

Brilliantly witty

It is wonderfully written - full of wit, gags, self-deprecating asides and a pure, unfettered understanding of a man's limitations - and it talks to all of us. You should buy it. You really should go out straight away and pick up a copy. It'll make you feel so much better

At last the work of genius that will finally bring the long-suffering cricket addict a measure of understanding in the world. A wonderful and very funny book

You read the wonderful Michael Simkins with a mixture of horror and delight

One of Britain's funniest writers

Extremely funny - whether or not you know your bails from your balls

One of the funniest sporting memoirs ever

Almost painfully funny

An all-too honest account of a playing career that just got better and better, despite threatening to go off the rails.

An extraordinary book.

Harrowing and brutally honest...a gripping story.

Brutally honest.

Less a football autobiography, more repentant confessional.

stunning