Essential New Blackpool Book

Founder of Seasiders.net, Peter Gillatt, has produced a new book (the first of its kind since the early 1990’s) specifically for ‘Pool nuts.

The 192 page book is available to buy from the club shop and online at amazon.com. Click here to order your copy.

Blackpool – On This Day
By Peter Gillatt

I was approached by Pitch Publishing back in March 2008 to consider writing about Blackpool FC.

I wasn’t very well to be honest but I thought this would be good way of using my time before I could get enough strength to hopefully go back to full-time working.

I had some great contacts who I knew could help me with my research such was the extraordinary requirement to write something for every single day of the year.

Bin loads of old matchday magazines, football annuals and other memorabilia – you name it – started to swallow up my spare room. But that was only the start of it reading it all then took forever and more often than not just to extract a little bit of information which I thought would hopefully be of interest.

In fact towards the end I took an eye test for a new pair of specs only to be told I actually had a tear on each retina! What a shock that was (and as if I hadn’t been through enough!) but completely understandable as I was spending another 4-5 hours after work pouring over books and writing which was completely overdoing things.

The pressure to complete the book nearly finished me off in the final weeks of August/September and when the manuscript went in – I tongue in cheek informed the publishers either accept it or bin it as I refused to write anymore. I was actually 20,000 words over budget! So inevitably a lot of material the publisher (and not me!) decided not to include this time but has left the door open for me to add it in a future book.

On a personal note I’m really honoured to have had the chance to write something on Blackpool – I hope I’ve done this great club justice as well. I fought very hard to have some content included which was very much close to my heart. It’s been some 17 years since Roy Calley’s ‘Blackpool A Complete History 1887-1992’ was written and Blackpool – On This Day was therefore a fabulous opportunity to present again some of Blackpool’s historic past but was also a rare chance to catch up on the progress the club has made and includes some wonderful photos as well.

My introduction to Blackpool – On This Day perhaps best describes the aims of the book.

‘This book, which covers activity on every day of the year, brings to life many of the good, not so good, enjoyable, exciting, disastrous, nail-biting and frustrating events in the club’s history from its first league season in 1896/97,through to the present day when record signing Charlie Adam graces the Bloomfield Road pitch.’

If you are thinking of buying it, and I realise most of you are already very knowledgeable about everything on Blackpool, my hope is you will still find plenty of fascinating old and new material in the book that will make it a worthwhile read. It will be available mid-October either from the club shop or online via Amazon.com

Peter Gillatt, October 2009