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7Featuring a new 2016 update that takes in the two years since the hardback edition, Up There is an examination of football in North-east England, how it came to matter so much and why it matters still despite a formidable lack of success.
Featuring exclusive interviews with Niall Quinn, Sir John Hall, Aitor Karanka and Sam Allardyce among many others, Up There looks at the major North-east clubs' modern history and also at the culture, industrial and sporting, which saw the game rise to such prominence in the region.
With the local economy altered forever by the removal of shipbuilding and coalmining, Michael Walker asks how the economy and geography of the North-east affects its football clubs and grassroots. In the past a coalmining background provided a torrent of talent, from Bob Paisley to Bobby Charlton, but where is that managerial and playing talent today?
Part travelogue, part social history, part sporting investigation, Up There rediscovers and threads together some of the personalities and events that helped define a region.