A Christmas present with a difference for Saints fans

TWO loyal Saints fans have come up with a novel Christmas present for fellow supporters - a promisory 'greetings' card, assuring the recipient of a copy of their comprehensive new book on Saints when it comes out next summer, writes Ian Henderson.

Duncan Holley, who lives in Winchester, and Gary Chalk, from Eastleigh, are the official Historians and Statisticians of Southampton FC.

They published A Complete Record of the Saints in 1987, and have spent the last eight years adding to that story, including all the details of the career of Matt Le Tissier. They now have so much information that their update, called In That Number, stretches to two huge volumes.

The pre-war volume will be available in a couple of years' time. The post-war volume - the story of 57 seasons from 1946 to 2003 - will come out next summer.

It'll have more than 500 pages crammed with information and photographs, including a thumb-nail report of every game Saints have played in that period - in the League, Europe and the League Cup - plus much fuller reports of every FA Cup-tie. There'll be season-by-season line-ups for first team and reserve appearances, and mini-biographies of every first-team player - more than 350 of them.

Says Duncan: "It's probably the most comprehensive reference book ever produced about any football club in this country.

"It's been a tremendous amount of hard work, with Gary specialising in the research and getting information while I do most of the writing."

Gary says his efforts have been simplified by the use of the internet.

"Compared to researching our first book 15 years ago, it's now relatively simple to look up the career records of former players and all sorts of other information," he says.

"Lots of them even have their own websites. But it's still fair to say that the project has been a labour of love. The book will be, in effect, an encyclopaedia of Southampton FC."

To add to their workload, the pair are publishing In That Number themselves under their Hagiology Publishing label.

Subscribers named

The new book will include the names of everybody who 'subscribes' to it by advance payment, whether they want the special card for this Christmas or not. The card will have a message from Matt Le Tissier, who is writing the foreword to the book and who will personally sign each and every 'subscriber' copy.

What's more, this full-colour hardback book, which will retail at £29.99, is on offer to subscribers at the special, advance-order price of £25.

To find out more and to obtain a copy of the subscriber order form, contact Gary Chalk at 47 Doncaster Road, Eastleigh, SO50 5QP; tel: 02380 328435; mobile: 07713 089 984; or e-mail garyeastleigh@aol.com.

Or, if you like accessing websites, you can find the details and a copy of the order form on www.saintsforever.co.uk.