Final Season

In 1914, as today, professional footballers were heroes and role models. They were the sporting superstars of their time; symbols of youth, health and vigour. And naturally enough, when war broke out they felt it was their duty to join up. Between 1914 and 1918, 213 professional players fell in action. Some teams lost half their players, either killed or else so badly injured in mind and body that they were never to play again. The Final Season is the moving account of these young men who swapped the turf of the pitch and the cheers of the fans for the freezing mud of the battlefield and the scream of shell fire. It follows the players such as Patrick 'Handsome Jack' Crossnan (so-called by fans because he could pass anything but a mirror) and Walter Tull, Britain's second black professional player and first black commissioned officer, as they leave their clubs and towns, undergo training and then travel on to the bloody arenas of war: Mons, Gallipoli, the Somme, Paschendaele. Nigel McCrery paints these men in vivid detail. We will learn of their friendships, their loves, their sporting achievements, their wartime heroics. And we will learn when, and how, they made the ultimate sacrifice.