THE night Jock Stein died on the touchline at Ninian Park, Cardiff, I was seven-years-old and in Yorkhill hospital in Glasgow having my tonsils removed. I remember my dad mentioning it, but its significance passed me by until I was much older.
I loved playing football, but was not so interested in any one team or player (Star Wars figures were my passion in 1985), a feeling that has not changed much over the years.
So, age prohibited me having any personal experience of Stein. Does this disqualify me from dramatising parts of his life in a novel? Some might say, but people's opinion should be based on having read the book rather than preconceptions.
In researching, I have immersed myself in almost everything that has ever been written or recorded about Jock Stein. I read about 30 books - some of which had been out of print for decades - and watched every interview, pored over newspaper cuttings and talked to dozens of people who knew him. From coming up with the idea to the finished manuscript took three-and-a-half years.
His life has been well-documented, no question. So why, in my arrogance, did I think I could add to the body of work on Stein? Well, his life may be down in black and white, but I felt there was colour missing. The complexities of his character, the drama of his achievements, there deserved to be many more splashes on the canvas, I felt.
We were also aware of the cultural, social and political context. Society was changing rapidly in 1967. It was the Summer of Love - a hippie counterculture movement that found its expression in an explosion of creativity, politics, sexual freedom, drugs and music (Sergeant Pepper was released exactly a week after Lisbon).
We wanted to get all that into the novel.
Sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll ... and football. Something for everyone.
Martin Greig
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