The Albion - Roman Laskowski - Bog

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.