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My buddy Andy Ward, who has died of lymphoma aged 72, was an uncommon writer who printed virtually 30 sports activities books in addition to works on increased schooling, together with What Use Is a Diploma? (2002). He later turned a fellow of the Royal Literary Fund.
Andy was born in Derby, the one baby of Nancy (nee Elliott), a machinist, and Tim Ward, an England soccer worldwide who went on to handle a clutch of league golf equipment, together with Derby County. His father moved golf equipment a number of instances, so Andy’s secondary education was fragmented – he attended grammar faculties in Wakefield and Grimsby (1959-63), Bemrose faculty, Derby (1963-67), and Carlisle grammar faculty (1967-68).
A careers instructor helped Andy to get a job at Littlewoods Mail Order Shops (1968-72), and whereas there he went to nighttime faculty and on day launch to realize an HNC in maths, statistics, numerical evaluation and computing (1970) and, in 1971, a supplementary certificates in maths, numerical evaluation and mathematical statistics.
He then took a level in sociology and statistics at Exeter College, graduating in 1975, and a grasp’s in kinesiology at Waterloo College, Ontario, awarded in 1978.
He had a variety of jobs – as a bingo caller at Butlin’s Skegness in 1977, a milkman for Co-Op dairies in Cambridge (1978-79), a sociology lecturer at Cambridge Faculty of Additional Training (1980-82), an Open College tutor (1983-87), and a college careers counsellor for 5 years within the late 80s and early 90s – earlier than he discovered his true vocation as a author. His first e book, in 1981, Barnsley: A Examine in Soccer 1953-59, drawing on intensive oral testimony, was praised within the Guardian. Michael Parkinson within the Sunday Occasions described it as a “important social doc”.
Widespread books on cricket, golf, horse-racing and bridge adopted, and several other weighty titles on totally different soccer golf equipment and the sociology of soccer, together with The Day of the Hillsborough Catastrophe: A Narrative Account (1995), which he co-authored. The extra romantic passages of No Milk Right this moment (2016), a examine within the decline of the British milkman, have been serialised within the Each day Mirror. Andy’s putting capability for understanding is movingly portrayed in The Start Father’s Story (2012), based mostly on his troublesome expertise as a teen of dropping a toddler to adoption. It was written after he was reunited together with his son in 2000.
Andy was at all times a dissident power – he noticed TV units and vehicles as useless distractions. His social circle was big, and shared a enjoyment of phrases and an anarchic sense of humour. In 1984 he and a flatmate began The Picayune, a satirical Christmas broadsheet that went out to shut associates.
I co-authored Andy’s first e book and, virtually 40 years later, his final, The Strangest Soccer Quiz E book (2019) – a mirrored image of his capability for fidelity in friendship. He was at all times keen on Abide With Me, sung yearly on the Cup closing, and he lived his life within the gentle of it.
He’s survived by his son, Adrian, granddaughters, Robyn and Isabel, and his accomplice of 4 years, Margaret Lear.
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