The Great Football Treble

“I used to love football. All I wanted was to play. But this club – run-down, hopeless , no leadership. And now Davy.” Robbie paused. “I didn’t tell you this, but I stopped where Davy was injured. I saw his studmarks in the ground. And it was like an invisible black hole in the air. Like I was drowning in water I couldn’t see, trapped in ice I couldn’t feel. I thought I was going to die – then it was gone.”

It is the 1985-6 football season. The Premiership is six years in the future. The Football League still consists of four divisions. And Bowland United are at the bottom of the Fourth. Once they were the best team in the country, with nine league championships and five FA Cups. In 1939 they were the first team to do the Cup and League double. Now they struggle for survival, facing re-election to the League, dogged by bad luck, tragic accidents – and the supernatural. A succession of promising young players are mysteriously badly injured on the pitch, and all report being fouled by a ghostly player who vanishes as strangely as he appeared. Something sinister has laid a curse on this club and a dreadful secret lies buried in the past.

HAUNTED UNITED was first published by Andre Deutsch in 1986. This new edition has been thoroughly updated.

Some reviews:

This fine book reflects the problems of a whole community: it is the kind of multi-faceted novel which the mid-’teens should be able to find more often. Margery Fisher, GROWING POINT

A chilling picture of demoralised players, derelict stands and the end of a great tradition.
THE SCHOOL LIBRARIAN

Dennis Hamley has managed to combine the two popular themes of sport and horror into one successful tale full of thrills, suspense and variety. BOOKS FOR KEEPS

Dennis Hamley is a specially talented yarnspinner Geoff Fox, TES

CONTAINS SOME STRONG LANGUAGE