Glorious Dixie, another Ali knockout, surviving Covid

Rounding up some more of the year's most engaging sports reads

After the Storm by Damian Lawlor

Dave Hannigan makes it a neat and magnificent trilogy of books he has done on Muhammad Ali with Fifteen Rounds in the Wilderness, the follow up on his last effort and Ali’s last fight, The Drama In the Bahamas. Again the writing and research is impeccable as he chronicles and captures the tragic decline but remarkable generosity and prevailing wit of the great man in those 15 years from trading fading blows with Berbick to lighting the Olympic flame at Atlanta ’96.

Another slice of history beautifully captured by the Pitch Publishing stable is Paul Little’s In The Shadow of Benbulben. Dixie Dean used to bang them in for Everton at a rate we never thought could be repeated until Messi and Ronaldo came along and also started scoring 60 or so a season. He hung up his boots at 32 to become a scout only to put them back on again in 1939 when one of his first clients Sligo Rovers were on the lookout for a striker and they figured sure who better than Dixon himself. The book is just as glorious as Rovers’ Cup run that year.