AN IMPRINT OF BIRLINN LIMITED
Birlinn Limited was established in 1992 by Managing Director Hugh Andrew, and is comprised of five seperate imprints. Arena Sport is Birlinn’s sport imprint. The sport books range from football and rugby, to golf, running and cycling. These books have an international as well as national appeal. Arena’s first titles were published in June 2013 and the list contains a range of awardwinning world-class writers.
NEW TITLES 2018
How to be a cyclist AN A–Z GUIDE FOR THE M.A.M.I.L
JOHN DEERING & PHIL ASHLEY ISBN: 9781909715516 Price: £8.99 Format: 198x129 B-pbk Extent: 176pp Images: colour throughout Rights: World All Languages ePub: 9780857908308 Publication: 05 April 2018 • Packed with information on the best cycling etiquette for newbies, and a very funny, tongue-in-cheek view on the unwritten code of cycling for existing MAMILS • The hardback sold 4,000 copies and has become a cult classic amongst cyclists No bicycle repair was ever made easier by turning your bike upside down. White shorts are for other people. A helmet perched on the back of your head is perfect if you ride your bike backwards. These and a host of other handy pointers jostle for attention within this A–Z guide to being a cyclist. It’s an essential manual and source of wisdom for those who would be kings of the road. Many pitfalls await the unwary middle-aged-man-in-Lycra, but fear not, for the Guide is here to steer you through choppy waters. No more passing out halfway up a hill. No more ridicule in the work place. No more hurty knee. And no more sock crimes. How to be a Cyclist is mandatory reading for all bike riders.
‘Prepare to have you wanderlust stoked’ – The Herald John Deering supplies features to publications such as Procycling, The Official Tour de France Guide and Ride Cycling Review, and contributed regularly to Eurosport’s cycling coverage. Phil Ashley studied in Hertfordshire and Swansea before returning to London to set up his own studio. He photographs people, products and places for the likes of the Observer, Nokia, Glaxo Smith Kline and Getty Images.
NEW TITLES 2018
run forever YOUR COMPLETE GUIDE TO HEALTHY LIFETIME RUNNING
AMBY BURFOOT ISBN: 9781909715608 Price: £14.99 Format: 234 x 156mm Trade Paperback Extent: 224pp Rights: UK & Commonwealth exc. NA ePub: 9781788850919 Publication: 07 June 2018 • A highly respected author, journalist and editor, Amby Burford has run over 100,000 miles, competed in numerous marathons, and has spent a career covering the sport’s greatest events and competitors. In Run Forever, Boston Marathon winner and former Runner’s World editor-in-chief Amby Burfoot shares practical advice and wisdom on how to run with greater joy and health for an entire lifetime. Everyone learns how to run at an early age. It’s naturally wired into your body. Yet in recent years, running has become complicated by trendy gadgets and doctrine. With a Boston Marathon win and over 100,000 miles run on his resume, Amby Burfoot steers the sport back to its simple roots in Run Forever. From a warm and welcoming perspective, Burfoot provides clear, actionable guidance to runners of every age and ability level. Whether you are a beginner runner or experienced marathoner, Run Forever will show you how to motivate yourself, avoid injuries, increase speed and endurance, and reach your goals. Best of all, you’ll enjoy optimal health throughout your life.
Amby Burfoot was the editor-in-chief of Runner’s World for over 20 years and a former winner of the Boston Marathon. He is the author of the Complete Guide to Running. He lives in the USA.
NEW TITLES 2018
The Performance Cortex HOW NEUROSCIENCE IS REDEFINING ATHLETIC GENIUS
ZACH SCHONBRUN ISBN: 9781909715653 Price: £14.99 Format: 234 x 156mm Trade Paperback Extent: 352pp Images: 16pp colour & b/w plates Rights: UK & Commonwealth exc. NA ePub: 9781788851053 Publication: 05 July 2018 • Athletic genius explained. A groundbreaking new perspective on the science of elite sporting performance. Why couldn’t Michael Jordan, master athlete that he was, hit a baseball? Why can’t modern robotics come close to replicating the dexterity of a five-year-old? Why do good quarterbacks always seem to know where their receivers are? In this deeply researched book, Sports and Business reporter Zach Schonbrun explores what actually drives human movement and its spectacular potential. The groundbreaking work of two neuroscientists in Major League Baseball is only the beginning. Schonbrun traces the fascinating history of motor research and details how new investigations in the brain are helping explain the extraordinary skills of talented performers like Stephen Curry, Tom Brady, Serena Williams, and Lionel Messi; as well as musical virtuosos, dancers, rock climbers, race-car drivers, and more.
‘Schonbrun’s deep dive into the cutting-edge science of human movement gives the reader X-ray vision into the brains of the world’s greatest performers. It will enthrall anyone who has watched a sporting event and asked: How do they do that?’ – David Epstein Zach Schonbrun has been a contributing writer for The New York Times since 2011, covering primarily sports and business. His work has also appeared in ESPN magazine, Newsday, The Washington Post, Yahoo! Sports, VICE, and SB Nation Longform.
NEW TITLES 2018
The Away Game THE EPIC SEARCH FOR FOOTBALL’S NEXT SUPERSTARS
SEBASTIAN ABBOT ISBN: 9781909715660 Price: £14.99 Format: 234 x 156mm Trade Paperback Extent: 304pp Images: 16pp colour plates Rights: UK & Commonwealth exc. NA ePub: 9781788851060 Publication: 05 July 2018 • The gripping story of a group of boys discovered in what may be the largest talent search in sports history. Over the past decade, an audacious programme called Football Dreams has held trials for millions of 13-year-old boys across Africa looking for football’s next superstars. Led by the Spanish scout who helped launch Lionel Messi’s career at Barcelona and funded by the desert kingdom of Qatar, the programme has chosen a handful of boys each year to train to become professionals – a process over a thousand times more selective than getting into Harvard. In The Away Game, reporter Sebastian Abbot follows a small group of the boys as they are discovered on dirt fields across Africa, join the glittering academy in Doha where they train, and compete for the chance to gain fame and fortune at Europe’s top clubs. Richly reported and deeply moving, The Away Game is an unforgettable story of the joy and pain these talented African boys experience as they chase their dreams in a dizzying world of rich Arab sheikhs, money-hungry agents, and football-mad European fans.
‘A masterful account of the drama and science of scouting [and] a lively evocation of football mania in Africa’ – The Economist Sebastian Abbot worked for the Associated Press in Cairo and Islamabad, where he was bureau chief. He holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from Princeton University and a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.
NEW TITLES 2018
Butch Wilkins and the Sundance Kid A TEENAGE OBSESSION WITH TV SPORT
NIGE TASSELL ISBN: 9781909715615 Price: £14.99 Format: 234 x 156mm Trade Paperback Extent: 288pp Rights: World All Languages ePub: 9781788850926 Publication: 06 September 2018 • Will appeal to fans of Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch, Giles Smith’s Midnight In The Garden of Evel Knievel and Martin Kelner’s Sit Down And Cheer • Hilariously and touchingly recreates the halcyon days of 1980s British sport Butch Wilkins and the Sundance Kid chronicles the Nige Tassell’s decade-long obsession with televised sport during his teenage years in the 1980s. Charting similar waters to Nick Hornby’s classic Fever Pitch, but with the hopeless devotion of a teenager faithfully following his team around the country replaced by the hopeless devotion of a teenager faithfully following sport (any sport) around the TV schedules. It is memoir intertwined with nostalgia, ruminations on the changing face of sport during this period, portraits of its heroes and villains, and reflections on teenagehood and impending adulthood. Sweet, wise and witty, it vividly depict the way sport can transcend the television screen to impact on wider life, hopes and ambitions.
‘Nige is one of my favourite chroniclers of sport. Not any particular event itself but how we as distant onlookers eternally feel it, chase it, recall it, absorb it in the heart. Which, for me, is just as important’ – Danny Baker Nige Tassell has been a journalist for more than twenty years. He has written extensively for FourFourTwo, The Guardian, 220 Triathlon, The Word and BBC History, and is the author of several books, including Three Weeks, Eight Seconds: The Epic Tour de France of 1989 and The Bottom Corner: A Season with the Dreamers of Non-League Football.
NEW TITLES 2018
What Happened to Serie A THE RISE, FALL AND SIGNS OF REVIVAL
STEVEN G. MANDIS ISBN: 9781909715639 Price: £14.99 Format: 234 x 156mm Trade Paperback Extent: 352pp Rights: World All Languages ePub: 9781788850940 Publication: 06 September 2018 • A forensic examination into Italian football and its fall from grace • Unprecedented access to Italian clubs and key decision makers and players In the 1980s and 1990s, Serie A was known as ‘Il campionato più bello del mondo’ – the most beautiful championship in the world. Across a ten year period from 1989 to 1999 a remarkable 10 different Serie A clubs occupied nearly half the places in the finals of the Champions League and Europa Cup. They were dominant. But then in the 2000s they began to fall behind and despite the Azzurri winning the World Cup in 2006 and Inter Milan winning the Champions League in 2010, Italian football was on a downwards trajectory that saw the national team fail to qualify for the 2018 World Cup, their first absence from the tournament since 1958. What happened and why? In this extraordinary book, Steven G. Mandis investigates. Given unprecedented behind-the-scenes access to Italian clubs and key decision makers and players, Mandis is the first outside researcher to rigorously analyse both the on-the-field and business aspects of a club and league. What he learns is completely unexpected and challenges popular explanations and conventional wisdom.
Steven G. Mandis is an adjunct associate professor in finance and economics at Columbia Business School, having previously worked at Goldman Sachs and Citigroup and as a senior advisor to McKinsey & Co. He is the author of The Real Madrid Way: How Values Created the Most Successful Sports Team on the Planet (2016).
NEW TITLES 2018
Bring Me the Sports Jacket of Arthur Montford AN ADVENTURE THROUGH SCOTTISH FOOTBALL
AIDAN SMITH ISBN: 9781909715561 Price: £9.99 Format: 198 x 129 B-Hardback Extent: 208pp Images: Line drawings throughout Rights: World All Languages ePub: 9781788850933 Publication: 01 August 2019 • An hilarious, irreverent but also deeply nuanced and affectionate look at some of the greatest – and oddest – moments in Scottish football history The submariner arm of Ally’s Tartan Army. When Dixie Deans met Bob Marley. Jimmy Johnstone’s boating trip. Alex Miller, ice cream vendor. Willie Carr’s amazing, death-defying donkeykick. What happened to Bon Accord after the world-record 36-0. The Famous Five from Easter Road who won Brazil the World Cup. Jim Leishman’s poetry. And of course, Arthur Montford, resplendent in his sports jacket – the face of STV’s Scotsport for 32 years. In Bring Me the Sport Jacket of Arthur Montford, Aidan Smith takes a nostalgic, heart-warming and often hilarious look back through the history of Scottish football in 51 glorious – and inglorious – moments, celebrating all that is wonderful, quirky and often downright odd about Scotland’s national game. It contains memories to make you smile, wince, shudder and laugh out loud – 51 vignettes that encapsulate everything we love about football north of the border (and just over it, thanks to our dear English neighbours, Berwick Rangers).
Aidan Smith is a journalist for The Scotsman, a five-times-winner in the Scottish Press Awards, and the author of three previous books, Heartfelt, Union Jock and Persevered.
NEW TITLES 2018
Advantage Play TECHNOLOGIES THAT CHANGED SPORTING HISTORY
STEVE HAAKE ISBN: 9781909715592 Price: £16.99 Format: 216 x 138mm Demy Hardback Extent: 316pp Images: 16pp colour plates and b/w throughout Rights: UK & Commonwealth exc. NA ePub: 9781788851084 Publication: 04 October 2018 • Written by one of the world’s foremost experts in sports technology • Examines how technological innovation has fundementally changed the history of sport Advantage Play tells the dramatic stories of thirteen technological breakthroughs in 2000 years of sporting history used to gain an advantage in sport, from rubber for rugby and tennis balls, carbon fibre for bikes and prosthetics, to polyurethane for swimsuits. Breakthroughs crop up throughout history, not just for modern football boots but for the javelin of the ancient Greeks and even the original starting line at Olympia. Our obsession with sporting data is not new although our methods of collecting it is: phones, sensors and monitors. And the biggest placebo of them all helps us buy this equipment and perform better – advertising. Rather than being a new thing, sports technology is actually as old as civilisation. With his 30 years as a sports engineer, Steve Haake shows that in a world where top performances are static, where we’ve found all the best athletes and deployed the best coaching methods, the one thing that might distinguish the winners from the losers is new technology. Steve Haake has published six books, authored over 150 journal papers on the physics and engineering of sport, and written articles for the New Scientist, Physics World, Ingenia and the Times Higher Education. He is currently the director of the Advanced Wellbeing Research Centre at Sheffield Hallam University.
NEW TITLES 2018
Behind the Dragon PLAYING RUGBY FOR WALES
ROSS HARRIES ISBN: 9781909715585 Price: £20.00 Format: 234 x 156mm Royal Hardback Extent: 400pp Images: Colour throughout Rights: World All Languages ePub: 9781788851077 Publication: 04 October 2018 • This Welsh rugby edition joins the best-selling series of behind-the-scenes histories • Packed full of exclusive and previously untold stories This is a complete history of the Welsh rugby union team – told by the players themselves. Based on a combination of painstaking research into the early years of the Wales team to brand new interviews with a vast array of Test match players and coaches from the Second World War to the present day, Ross Harries delves to the very heart of what it means to play for Wales, painting a unique and utterly compelling picture of the game in the only words that can truly do so: the players’ own. Behind the Dragon lifts the lid on what it is to pull on the famous red shirt with the Prince of Wales feathers – the trials and tribulations behind the scenes, the glory, drama and honour on the field, and the heart-warming tales of friendship and humour off it. Absorbing and illuminating, this is the ultimate history of Welsh rugby – told, definitively, by the men who have been there and done it.
Praise for the series: ‘Takes the reader as close to the action as it is possible to get, short of invading the pitch’ – The Scotsman
Ross Harries is regularly seen presenting the BBC’s international rugby coverage, and presenting BBC Wales’ Scrum V and Scrum V Live programmes (the most watched rugby programmes on British television) and a regular on BBC radio. In 2015, he co-wrote Bomb: My Autobiography with Adam Jones.
NEW TITLES 2018
Scottish Rugby101 A POCKET GUIDE IN 101 MOMENTS, STATS, CHARACTERS AND GAMES
PETER BURNS ISBN: 9781909715677 Price: £5.99 Format: 156x111 A-Paperback Extent: 128pp Images: b/w throughout Rights: World All Languages ePub: 9781788851091 Publication: 04 October 2018 • A fun guide to Scottish rugby, a perfect gift for all Scottish rugby fans • Packed full of facts, anecdotes, stats, lists and quotes Scottish Rugby 101 is a compendium of fascinating facts, quotes, stats, stories, personalities and trivia – a perfect stocking-filler for all fans of Scottish rugby. From the very first Test match in 1871 all the way through to the present day, Scottish rugby’s rich history is distilled into 101 facts, stats and stories. This fun-packed volume is an instructive, if sometimes irreverent – but always affectionate – guide to some of the ground-breaking firsts, controversies, innovations, achievements and disasters that have taken place in the game north of the Border – an entertaining crib-sheet to Scottish rugby for experts and novices alike.
Peter Burns is the editor for Arena Sport and author of When Lions Roared: The Lions, The All Blacks and the Epic Tour of 1971, Behind the Thistle: Playing Rugby for Scotland, Behind the Ryder Cup: The Players’ Stories, White Gold: England’s Journey to World Cup Glory and Behind the Lions: Playing Rugby for the British & Irish Lions.
NEW TITLES 2018
RED DOT PARENTING HOW TO HELP YOUR KIDS REACH THEIR SPORTING POTENTIAL
TONY STANGER ISBN: 9781909715691 Price: £8.99 Format: 198 x 129mm B-Paperback Extent: 128pp Rights: World All Languages Publication: 06 September 2018
• A simple to follow guide for parents to help their children achieve their sporting goals • Written by a coaching expert who was himself a hugely successful elite athlete It’s not easy being a parent of sporty kids. On an almost daily basis kids go through ups and downs in training and competition and, as a parent, it can be challenging to know how to help – ‘I wasn’t selected again, mum, and I’m not sure I want to play anymore.’ In Red Dot Parenting, former Scotland rugby star and Institute of Sport mentor, Tony Stanger, shows parents what they can do to help when these moments happen. Parents are NOT the coach. But they do have a crucial role in supporting their child’s sporting education. Based on robust science yet presented in an easy to read and understand format, this book is full of tips and ideas parents can put into practise straight away to build on the things they already do well. The evidence tells us parents are crucial in children achieving their goals in sport, this book explains what they can do to help.
Tony Stanger represented Scotland 52 times at Rugby Union and is currently their joint top try-scorer of all time. He has a 1st Class honours degree in Applied Sports Science and an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Edinburgh. After retiring from rugby in 2001 he was a full-time coach at the Leads Rugby Academy and London Irish for seven years and then spent a further seven years as the Head of Talent at the Scottish Institute of Sport. He now runs a talent system consultancy company, Stangerpro.
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ISBN: 9781909715493 eBook ISBN: 9780857909220 Price: £14.99 Format: 234 x 156mm pbk Rights: World English Language November 2016
ISBN: 9781909715257 eBook ISBN: 9780857908179 Price: £14.99 Format: 234 x 156mm pbk Rights: World English Language October 2014
ISBN: 9781909715486 eBook ISBN: 9780857903464 Price: £14.99 Format: 234 x 156mm pbk Rights: World All Languages June 2017
ISBN: 9781909715578 eBook ISBN: 9780857908438 Price: £9.99 Format: 198 x 129mm pbk Rights: World English Language October 2017
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ISBN: 9781909715110 eBook ISBN: 9780857901064 Price: £8.99 Format: 198 x 129mm pbk Rights: World June 2014
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ISBN: 9781909715547 eBook ISBN: 9780857909343 Price: £17.99 Format: 234 x 156mm hbk Rights: UK & Comm(exc-Canada) April 2017
ISBN: 9781909715370 eBook ISBN: 9780857909312 Price: £12.99 Format: 198 x 129mm pbk Rights: World All Languages September 2017
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ISBN: 9781909715394 eBook ISBN: 9780857901903 Price: £7.99 Format: 198 x 129mm pbk Rights: World All Languages October 2016
ISBN: 9781909715479 eBook ISBN: 9780857909213 Price: £14.99 Format: 234 x 156mm hbk Rights: World November 2016
ISBN: 9781909715295 eBook ISBN: 9780857908575 Price: £9.99 Format: 198 x 129mm pbk Rights: World English Language July 2015
ISBN: 9781909715165 eBook ISBN: 9780857908025 Price: £12.99 Format: 234 x 156mm pbk Rights:World English Language June 2014
ISBN: 9781909715141 eBook ISBN: 9780857906939 Price: £14.99 Format: 234 x 156mm pbk Rights: World All Languages November 2014
ISBN: 9781909715264 eBook ISBN: 9780857908308 Price: £7.99 Format: 198 x 129mm pbk Rights: UK & Comm (ex-Canada) June 2014
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