Imprint
- Hachette Scotland
- Headline
Scotland, Biography: general, Autobiography: sport, Memoirs, Prose: non-fiction, Family psychology, Sports teams & clubs, Football (Soccer, Association football)
A warm and witty memoir about a Father and Son as they witness the extraordinary rags to riches rise of Aberdeen FC in the 1980s.
Late on a winter s night in 1976 at the age of 5, I lay awake in bed, absolutely petrified. Something was causing a man to shout, swear and bang in the lounge beneath my room. When I eventually went downstairs, I found my elated Dad sitting in front of the last couple of minutes of the football highlights on TV. He d watched his team, Aberdeen, reach the Scottish League Cup Final with a dramatic 5-1 victory over Rangers.
It was the first in a series of events that would forge an amazing relationship with my Dad as we followed Aberdeen at home and away, for the next ten years.
It was a time when the enormous fan base of the Old Firm rampaged through the streets and football grounds of Scotland. A time when we watched Alex Ferguson s Aberdeen rise to the top of Scottish and European football, and then fall all the way back down again...
Praise for On Fire with Fergie
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'Captures vividly a moment in history...will strike a chord for football fans everywhere' - Scotland on Sunday
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'The relationship between father and son, lovingly rendered, is one that will resonate with any male reader lucky enough to have had a dad cut from similar cloth...a magnificent read' - Sunday Herald
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'This is much more than a fitba' book - it's a well-written tale of familial relationships, adolescence, quiet rebellion and growing up' - Aberdeen Voice
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'This fascinating father-and-son fan dynamic interwoven with tales from Pittodrie under the Alex Ferguson brand is one of impossible dreams becoming reality' - Bryan Cooney
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'Often amusing and sometimes touching...much like FEVER PITCH it will strike a chord with all fans whose first taste of football was in the edgy '80s' - Four Four Two
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'It's detail and honesty shine a light into murky corners of late 20th century Scottish history' - When Saturday Comes
Stuart Donald
Stuart Donald was born in Aberdeen in 1971 but spent his school years in Perth.As the fortunes of Aberdeen FC waned in the late eighties, Stuart left Perth High School to pursue an HND in business studies with languages in Dundee. Throughout the 1990s Stuart worked regularly in Italy and France to improve his command of the languages, working in hotels, in a cobblers, ironing shirts in a dry-cleaners and writing reports on economic cooperation for the local chamber of commerce. Stuart then attended Strathclyde University to do an honours degree course in International Business with modern languages (IBML), which led to a career in financial services, based between London and Paris and working for American conglomerate General Electric. Stuart met his wife Catriona and in 2005, they both came home to Scotland, where they were lucky enough to get good jobs in Edinburgh. Shortly after that they moved to Linlithgow, got married in 2006 and their daughter Elodie arrived in 2008.
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