Since its release a couple of weeks ago the book, Bobby Stokes ! The man from Portsmouth who scored Southampton's most famous goal, has been flying out of the shops, but is it living up to the hype ?

Southampton Football Club has been crying out for a book of this nature for years, for a football club of our stature we have surprisingly few books about our club and those that have been published have tended to be by the excellent Hagiology publishing or ghost written (auto) biographies of some of our more famous players whom we knew a lot about anyway.

So a book dedicated to the man who scored the most famous goal in our history is long overdue, but when I learned about it's publication the big question would be whether it would be any good ?

The question is soon answered, right from the start you realise that the author Mark Sanderson is a man who is not only passionate about Saints, but the subject he is tackling, add to that an eye for research and you have a different sort of book than that we have had on our players before.

Sanderson has taken the facts, he has then spoken to those that were there and he has then mixed it all together with the mind of a supporter, so what e get is a bokk that you will want to read on all levels, it tells the story as we all know it, but then looks at the men who created history for Southampton Football Club and gives the real story behind the scenes.

For youngsters under 45 perhaps Bobby Stokes is just a name, so the book is vital in making sure his name lives on in future generations, but for those of us that were there it invokes memories, some of which we had long forgotten.

But few knew the real Bobby Stokes, as a kid back in 1976 I saw him play a lot, but up until that day in May at Wembley he was never the player whose name you shouted as you scored in a kick around on Green Park, even in the week leading to the final, kids always wanted to be Channon or Osgood.

So right up to the Final Bobby Stokes was almost the unknown player in the squad despite having made over 200 appearances at that point, he was just there, a hard working player who was never going to be the hero, right up until the moment he was !

But the general consensus is that Bobby was a man whose career was all but over quickly after the final, in many respects that has substance, four months after the Final he scored his last and indeed only goal post Wembley for the club and ten months later he had played his last game.

But the fact is although he died prematurely in 1995, there was a lot more to his life after the Cup Final and indeed before it and that is what Mark Sanderson brings out so well.

When you start the book you do so thinking how little you know about Bobby and when you finish it you realise that there was a lot more to him than just that goal.

This makes it riveting reading, once I picked it up I could not put it down, each chapter made me want to get on to the next one and each subsequent chapter brought me one closer to what I really wanted to read and that was the Cup Final, but that is also a little unfair in that to know Bobby you have to know the man and not just that grainy TV image of him nipping in and leaving Alex Stepney groping at thin air.

Mark Sanderson has got his facts right and then brought the story from all angles be it Bobby's team mates or his friends and family and that is perhaps what makes it so interesting.

Although the author has not left any stone unturned, we all know that this book is not going to have a happy ending and from that viewpoint there is the feeling that perhaps Mark Sanderson is being a little sympathetic rather than accusatory in the final chapters.

It would have been easy to paint Bobby as a man down on his luck to whom life did not deal him a good hand in the 20 years leading to his death, but that is not the case, it would have been easy to have pointed the finger at Saints as a club who like many football clubs in those days did not really care too much for their ex players, it would have been easy to point a finger at Bobby's wife who left him around six months before his death and that angle is not touched on with any great details but Sanderson prefers to finish his book on a more upbeat note and in his final year both his ex team mates and the club were looking to help him a little more .

Bobby was not a man who asked for help, he got on with life and seemed to enjoy it right up to almost the very end, yes like most ex players he perhaps struggled a little to cope with life after the professional game, but read this book and you get a true tale of what it was like for most footballers back in those days, how hard they had to work and how quickly it could all end.

If you buy one football book this year, then buy this one, its written in a style that keeps your attention, it's written with passion and an eye for detail, it's a warts and all story and it needed to be told.

Bobby Stokes The man from Portsmouth who scored Southampton's most famous goal is available from most good book shops and from the Saints megastores for a bargain £12.99.

The Author will be doing a book signing at Waterstones in West Quay this coming Saturday 14th May at 11am.

Look out for our competition on www.theuglyinside.net on Friday where we will be giving away a copy of the book.

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