Underdogs

Fascinating... The beginning of professionalism, a change in the style of playing, the end of southern amateur Oxbridge chaps dominating football... Keith [Dewhurst] has done an excellent research job in recreating the times and tensions

Hunter Davies, Spectator

Keith Dewhurst...does a sound job of explaining how Darwen's exploits presaged a seismic shift in football power, as the upper-class amateur ethos of clubs based mainly in the south inexorably lost gruond to the more hard-nosed, and increasingly more skilful, approach of clubs in the North-West. [A]story of FA Cup magic

Simon Redfern, Independent on Sunday

It is a brilliant story, and Dewhurst tells it with forensic detail… Full of fascinating facts and some wonderful anecdotes as he traces the early development of football into a mass sport as the aspiring sons of the industrial classes went to public schools and brought the game back home with them… Fascinating stuff

Sarah Crompton, Daily Telegraph

An absorbing historic insight into their unlilely cup run, as well as the game's early struggle to establish itself

Four Four Two

If you're looking for a true, well-written football story highlighting class divisions, how the game changed and early evidence of the will to win set in Victorian England, then Keith Dewhurst's Underdogs will not disappoint

Birmingham Post