Kick It!

Football and writing have long gone hand-in-hand for Paul, who first developed a passion for prose in a player-reporter role for his free-scoring primary school team. For more than three decades it looked as if he'd peaked early, the standard publishing rejections punctuating careers in music administration and teaching, while his Sunday League endeavours were best described as ordinary.

He now pays the bills by creating learning resources to help overworked teachers educate the next generation, but he'd rather be writing about important stuff like football, music and film, and was therefore celebrating like Roger Milla when his first book was published in 2023. This is his hat-trick effort.