Bower beats Grobbelaar

A lacklustre year for sports publishing was reflected in the announcement yesterday of the winner of the William Hill Sports Book of the Year award.

Broken Dreams: Vanity, Greed and the Souring of British Football, by the investigative journalist Tom Bower, beat off the likes of David Thomas's colourful and personal account of the Grobbelaar trials, Foul Play, but the calibre of the 2003 shortlist, which also included Bob Wilson's autobiography, was distinctly lower than in recent years.

Bower's book is an admirable attempt to put to the sword all those figures who have been lining their pockets at football's expense since the financial revolution of the early 1990s, and was described by one reviewer when it was published in March as "dense but devastating". But it is, essentially, a glorified trawl through the cuttings libraries.

'Broken Dreams: Vanity, Greed and the Souring of British Football', by Tom Bower, Simon & Schuster, £17.99 hardback, £6.99 paperback.