Andrew Stephen, editor of the CFU fanzine Amber News, gives his impressions of volume two of Celery & Coconuts, Andrew Bennett's history of Abbey/Cambridge United.

I find it almost impossible to like books about sport in general and about football in particular. Most writers who know about their sport find it difficult to convey the sense of excitement generated by a live event. Being there, when something that matters to you is happening, is a deeply personal thing. Football writers increasingly kill off their subjects with a kind of trainspotter’s approach to statistics, or, in the case of the tabloid ‘journalists’, a desire to dwell on celebrity and gossip rather than the nuances of the game.

Of course, Andrew Bennett has been writing match reports, with flair, insight and no little humour, for years. And he is a man who can be trusted with the history of the world’s greatest football team.

I was nearly seven when the fifties came to an end but this book brings that vital decade vividly to life, explaining how Abbey United were gradually transformed into a much more professional outfit ready to dominate the Southern League. Those watching games in that era will tell you that Wilf Mannion, even at 38 years old, was the greatest player ever to play for Cambridge United. Volunteers continued to develop and sometimes build parts of the ground, players of pedigree came and went and the club’s directors became ever more ambitious.

For me, the acid test for this book covered the games between 1967 and our election to the Football League, my first three years as a fan.

Leaving aside scores and their significance, I was taken back to paying 1/6d at the turnstiles as a Junior, the smell of sweet pipe tobacco at the Newmarket Road End, buying pies from the Supporters’ Club on the terrace which is now the Disabled Enclosure and the expectation of winning every game.

An edited version of this article appeared in the Cambridge United matchday programme for the FA Cup match against Sutton United on 5 November 2017.

In the memory’s eye, the image is crystal clear: a opposition right winger, believing he has got the better of United’s left back, is scampering towards the byline and scanning the penalty area for a forehead on which to plant his cross.

He should have heeded the words of the poet Burns: The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men/Gang aft agley. A booted foot, attached to a swinging left leg, appears out of nowhere and sweeps the ball out of harm’s way, into the Habbin or an Elfleda Road garden. The winger curses and furrows his brow.

The boot belonged to Brian Grant, one of the best exponents of the sliding tackle ever seen at the Abbey. His right hip must be worn smooth, so many times did he swivel on it.

‘I have a bit of a reputation for my sliding tackles and my swinging left leg,’ he once remarked, ‘and I must say this knack of turning on to the ball has got me out of trouble a few times during my career.’

As Andrew Bennett shows in Risen from the Dust (available online at the CFU store and at the caravan on match days), Brian played a big role in the late-60s Bill Leivers team that dominated the Southern League and showed the Football League what it could do.

He was the type of player managers were always looking for, said Leivers: ‘He always seems to be happy and is very big-hearted. On the field he is strong and very brave and his amazing recovery often gets us out of trouble …’

It was great to see Brian in rattling form, telling tales and cracking jokes, at a recent former players’ association get-together. He doesn’t look a day older than when he was snapped with fellow decorator Mick Coe by the Cambridge News in 1981 (right).

One of his stories related how, in 1966, he became Brian Clough’s first signing as a manager. Cloughie, newly installed at Hartlepools, paid Nottingham Forest £2,000 for the Coatbridge native’s services.

‘Tiger’ had been 15 when scouts from Forest and Manchester United spotted him. He opted for Forest and played 18 League games for Clough’s future club.

After Hartlepools he dallied briefly at Bradford City before arriving in Cambridge in the summer of 1967 and making his debut in a 3-1 Southern League Cup win over Kettering. He was to play 182 full games for the U’s, making five sub appearances and chipping in with two goals. That scoring feat cost teammate Roly Horrey £2; in contrast, the less than prolific Brian had only to fork out a penny when Roly netted.

The end of his time at the Abbey came in 1971, when he asked for a transfer after being dropped – some crunching tackles on Leivers in five-a-side had resulted in a punch-up – and he joined Kettering Town. Managerial posts at Histon, Bishop’s Stortford, Cambridge City and Saffron Walden followed, and he was in charge of the Cambs county side for three years.