“All I know most surely about morality and obligation I owe to football”,
Beyond the final whistle
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John Boyers, London Hodder and Stoughton, 2000 ISBN 0340 756276
John Boyers was one of the pioneers of football chaplaincy in England, serving as chaplain to Watford and later Manchester United as well as founding an organisation called SCORE which later became Sports Chaplaincy UK. The book is his autobiography.
The account of him becoming an assistant minister at a church in Watford, right next to the football club’s Vicarage Rd ground in the late 1970s and wondering how the church could serve the football club will be of interest to historians of chaplaincy. The book describes the first meeting with the then Watford manager, Graham Taylor, his appointment and the development of the role.
1990 saw him leave local church ministry and form SCORE, moving to Manchester to become chaplain to united. He describes his initial meetings with the club including manager, Alex Ferguson. There are descriptions of his day-to-day work at the club with the staff as much as the players, illustrating one of his principles of chaplaincy that the chaplain needs to be where people are.
Along side this material on his life as a chaplain there are chapters expressing similarities between Christianity and football and the chapter profiling Christian footballers - which does not make for a coherent book.
I'm never convinced that it is helpful to a chaplain's ministry to write a book about the people he ministers to. That generic reservation applies to the current book.