"This is a book for fans of New Orleans, of the universal ball
game, of ex-pats and of pubs. Score 10-nil for Rea and the
McCools." --The Irish American Post "Rea's book brings one of the
biggest stories of the century down to a touching, emotional,
personal level in a solid debut effort." --Phil Schoen, GolTV
commentator After jetting around the world, Stephen Rea left
Belfast to settle in New Orleans in 2004. Life in the Deep South
proved to be startlingly different from that in Northern Ireland,
and Rea struggled to find an outlet for his love of soccer. Before
long, the Ulsterman stumbled upon Finn McCool's pub and the
wonderfully eccentric, international crowd that gathers there to
watch European football games. Frank "the Tank," the pot-growing
Dutch national; Dave "the Rave" Ashton, a forty-six-year-old
physiotherapist from Manchester dubbed "the world's oldest
teenager"; and Benji Haswell, a former political activist from
South Africa, are three of the rare and vibrant characters who
populated the pub's stools. Soon Rea, along with this idiosyncratic
mix of locals and ex-pat regulars, formed a pub soccer team, joined
a league, and started dreaming of victory. On August 28, 2005, with
former pro footballer Scottish Steve "Macca" McAnespie as their
coach, members of the team sat in the pub discussing their upcoming
match. The next day, Hurricane Katrina enveloped the Gulf Coast,
scattering Rea and his teammates around the world in seek of
shelter and stability. This luminous, gripping work follows the
author and Finn regulars as they rebuild their lives and their
team. With a masterful combination of dry humor and astute
profundity, Rea reflects on his adopted city, providing powerful
insight into the lives of the foreign-born and minority groups that
stayed behind during Katrina due to the little they had to lose.
Filled with equally hilarious and sobering anecdotes and no
shortage of good soccer stories, Rea seamlessly weaves his
experiences alongside his teammates' harrowing survival stories. A
breathtaking and incredible debut celebrating camaraderie,
sportsmanship, and survival, "Finn McCool's Football Club" stands
out as a haunting and powerful memoir filled with laughter, loss,
astonishment, and of course, soccer.
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