I Like To Watch

In I Like To Watch, sports-mad Simon Wooldridge recounts a selection of memorable stories from four decades watching from stands and terraces across the world.

Football: The author encounters fanatics at games in Glasgow, Buenos Aires and Warsaw. He follows Arsenal for many years and later develops more than a soft spot for Brentford, Melbourne Heart and Deportivo La Coruna. In England he enjoys forays into the lower division at Hull, Accrington Stanley and Stockport. As a teenager he has a few close calls with fans of other clubs in London and endures a nervous wait by a roadside in Poland after an England World Cup qualifier. A visit to Skonto Riga proves surprisingly uninspiring.

Cricket: Wooldridge attends England Test matches in India and Sri Lanka, meeting locals and enjoying many of the quirks and peculiarities a visit to the subcontinent entails. He also recounts some of the many lows and one monumental high of five Ashes series in Australia between 2002 and 2018.

Aussie rules: Two years deciding which team to barrack for is followed by an on-off-on relationship with Australia's unique football code. It culminates with rivers of tears at the MCG and the Western Bulldogs' remarkable 2016 Premiership triumph.

Baseball: What starts as little more than wanting to experience some down-to-earth American culture leads to the author's one-item bucket-list (to see a game at every MLB stadium) and a close affinity with Oakland Athletics.

I Like To Watch also features running with the bulls in Pamplona, England vs Scotland in the 2011 World Cup in New Zealand, watching Muy Thai in Bangkok and some ruminating on the greyhound racing industry.

This insightful, humorous, and very readable sporting travelogue takes the reader on a journey to the periphery of the action. It will delight and charm both obsessive and armchair sports fans.

I Like To Watch includes a touching tribute to Arsenal legend David Rocastle.

The author is the son of the late Ian Wooldridge, sports journalist and broadcaster. "Sport was always a major talking point at home when I was a kid," Simon Wooldridge says. "It was pretty much ingrained in us from an early age."