Synopsis

Fast approaching forty, life’s experiences haven’t mellowed Terry Gallagher. He’s become an angry man. Sickened by the mindless violence all around him while trying to come to terms with his own thuggish past, he despairs as his near neighbour, old Mr. Johnson, war hero, is almost beaten to death in his own home while the police fail to bring anyone to justice. He rails at the apathy and neglect of incompetent politicians past and present who use an already deprived community as a dumping ground for social misfits, bad debtors, drug addicts and so called economic migrants. This was your legacy If you had the misfortune to grow up on the notorious Broughton estates, and all that Terry Gallagher had wanted to do was make a difference...

From these lawless streets, a rag bag bunch of thirteen year old scallies are shaped into a football team by one disillusioned man and his unwilling buddy. On a forgotten piece of waste ground, with stolen scaffolding for goalposts and a twenty-four hour pitch surveillance protection programme patrolled through the telescopic sight of a .22 air rifle, this team of dead end kids begin their adventure. From an inauspicious start in the local Junior District Football league to potential glory in the prestigious County Cup, for Terry Gallagher and West Broughton Albion, the season unfolds amidst a backdrop of squalor, depravity, manic depression, heroin addiction, Yardies, guns, and death; where a web of bizarre and tragic circumstances transpire to push the emotional and mental state of this reluctant philanthropist to the limit and ultimately tip him over the edge.

Excerpt

‘Duane?’ he called tentatively. ‘Duane?’ he called out again, a little louder, hardly daring to move from the bare, damp hall. He accidentally kicked the busted Yale lock that went scurrying across the floor before smacking itself to a halt up against the skirting. He thought he heard the whimper again and he slowly edged his way towards the sound, into the room that still had the meagre curtains pulled across the window where a small shaft of light penetrated the gloom through a gap at the top where they didn’t quite meet.

Then he saw her.

He froze stock still in shock. He’d been half expecting to come across something terrible, but the sight that confronted him still managed to stop him in his tracks. He tried to swallow but his saliva glands had stopped working and his sweat had started to dry cold on him. He peered into the half-light and held on to his breath. She was dead; he could see that. He inched his way into the room on feet that were reluctant to move until he could see her face, tipped back at a grotesque angle. One eye had settled up inside her head while the other, from behind a half-closed lid, stared out beyond him. Her head wasn’t the right shape; it was puffed and swollen. Curiously, just one side of her face, the one that was turned away against shoulder and settee, had become a ghastly, grey-blue colour; heavy and deformed, like all fluid had drained and settled there from other parts that were now colourless, waxy. There was vomit from her mouth, dried and congealed in a reservoir between her neck and shoulder.

Terry held his sleeve up to his face and tried to breathe sparingly. At some point she had let go of all her bodily functions and the smell was unbearable. He recoiled and tried to stop himself gipping; in t