The amazing Manchester City career of Tony Book: from a building site to the title | Simon Hattenstone
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Just how did an ageing non-league journeyman defender end up captaining the club to four major trophies in three years?. Tony Book. Mr Manchester City. Skip. One of our greats. Yet few fans have specific memories of him playing. Not necessarily because we didn’t see him play, just because he went about it so quietly. He wasn’t known for dashing overlaps or canny underlaps; flair or vision; passing or dribbling. And he certainly wasn’t known for his goals, though he did score four – or was it five – in his 315 games. Booky was a solid, tough-tackling right-back with a fair bit of pace, despite looking as if he should be on standby for a Dad’s Army XI.
![[Simon Hattenstone]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/uploads/2018/04/30/Simon_Hattenstone,_L.png?width=180&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
When we were kids, City fans wanted to be Franny Lee, “King” Colin Bell or Mike “Buzzer” Summerbee. Nobody wanted to be Book. Yet his was the most remarkable story by far. Anthony Keith Book, who died this week aged 90, represented possibility. The triumph of hope over expectation. The ultimate football dream. Take an ageing brickie off the building site and turn him into a top-class footballer at an age when most players were thinking of retiring. The fact that he wasn’t phenomenally gifted made it all the more romantic.
![[Tony Book with Derby County's John O' Hare during a game in the early 1970s.]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/ecfbd4445538db47a341c3a54a7c55bb29b46334/0_251_2400_1439/master/2400.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
It was Malcolm Allison who spotted his potential. Booky liked to tell the story of Allison climbing the scaffold at a building site where he was working to introduce himself as the new manager of Bath City in 1962. Book had spent his footballing life turning out for Bath as a semi-pro for £4 a week. He was already 28 going on 50. From then on, they were inseparable. Wherever Big Mal went he took Book. Briefly, and perhaps most unlikely, to Toronto. Then back to Plymouth where Allison invited Book to smudge his age on the forms so he could tell the board he’d signed a promising twentysomething . Nobody in their right mind would have splashed out £1,500 for an ancient full-back.
![[Tony Book during his time as manager of Manchester City. He missed out on winning the league title by a point in 1976-77.]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/95baab7a9d439bfbd0aeae08baa3bdaaa481f355/0_36_5576_3346/master/5576.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
