IT'S TIME FOR FOOTBALL FABLES

Subscribe to the first collection of fiction from Lee Wellings

I’m excited, relieved and proud to announce the launch of Football Fables, my first collection of ten short stories.

Football Fables is the first content from Get The Story Straight, the direct link to my writing via Substack. I plan to release a new story on the first Friday of each month, and the first few will be free to read without a subscription.

The first fable, The Footballer Who Kicked A Tortoise, has been released.

It’s subversive, it’s cheeky and it flames elite football, media and social media. There is no hiding place.

The second release is Lazy Susan (more details below). It’s a timely subject - how misogyny in football reflects society.

What I’m trying to do is trailblaze. I want this to inspire others to also release their work in this way, direct to the people who connect to their writing and audio stories and skipping the processes and layers that stand in the way of your fresh content.

This is now my living, after thirty years in sports journalism of which I’m intensely proud. During that time I was a teenage writer for national newspapers on Fleet Street, a deputy sports editor at twenty, one of first video journalists in the world, the first presenter of diverse TV sports news in the UK on a national network, a Sports Editor at Sky and ITN, a Programme Editor at BBC and a story teller around the globe for a decade. Always looking for the human story.

I’ve known the direction I wanted, needed and perhaps deserved to go in for a few years. First came my book on what sport tells us about life, The Dilly Dong Bell, released in 2022 and with a response from readers that warmed my heart.

But my road was leading to fiction. I’d covered so much reality, spent so much time asking for people to see the real story, that I realised the stories inside me, the fiction, could make the impact I need. And hopefully touch hearts. 

In January 2023 I started writing Football Fables and have spent many months living and breathing the world of characters I’d created. 

That was the ‘easy part’, and I’m lucky the next part of the process involved wonderful friends, professionals who have my back. David Miles, the copy editor who understands and helps my writing so well, Will Gothard, a fine author and sage advisor and Carrie Frais, who has helped immensely with the feedback on emotion and inclusivity in my writing. I’m very lucky to have their help, and that of other precious supporters too.

These stories are about life. They just happen to use football as a background, a pathway to emotions.

The harder part is the process. Finding a way to get these stories direct to you the reader, to ensure I have the order right, the release strategy correct and that I get the eventual subscription price right.

It’s possible my strategy won’t be perfect - I’m a writer not a businessman - but I can promise you two things; that I’ve tried to find the system that was most suitable and fair for a reader, and secondly that I’ve put my life and soul into every word I’ve written. 

In addition to the promise, a hope. I hope you relate to them as much as those who have kindly read them to give me feedback – when Carrie told me how much she laughed, but also how she’d cried, it was very moving for me. The characters feel so real to me because they come from what I’ve seen and heard. You’ll understand when you read the stories. They are about kindness, hope, faith, determination. Life.

What happens later this year when the first collection finishes during your annual subscription?

The second collection is being written shortly and will be released for your subscription when all ten original Football Fables are published. The next collection won’t all be football, in fact the intention is that most of them won’t be. I want to broaden the fables out to all of sport and beyond.

First comes Football Fables. What are they about? Please see below….

Thank you and much love,

Lee x

FOOTBALL FABLES

The Footballer Who Kicked A Tortoise (released, free to read on Substack)

Lazy Susan (released, free to read on Substack)

The Check (released, free to read on Substack)

Ref!

The Man Who Murdered Football (March 1)

A Tale of Two Clubs

Superstition

Tie a Yellow Scarf

I Wear Eleven

Golden Eras

The Footballer Who Kicked A Tortoise pulls apart the world of elite football and footballers. The egos, the money, the greed and hype. 

Andy Costa is a very famous player. Some fans still think he’s the best in the world but when he apparently kicks a tortoise in a photo shoot, it’s downhill from there.

It’s not just footballers who are tackled. It’s the entire scene at the top of ‘the beautiful game’. From unscrupulous agents to pompous journalists and charmless PRs who know the clickbait of everything and perspective of nothing. As for the public, the social media pile-ons and hot takes make a bad situation worse.

Will Andy’s reputation and career survive the backlash? Be nice to animals, be nice to people. And if you don’t want to ruin your career, don’t kick a tortoise.

Lazy Susan is about being misunderstood and someone needing to show faith to help lift them from the mire. Maybe you’ve been in this position. Or maybe you are the one who can offer help.

Susan is a teenage Scottish girl, a remarkably talented footballer, who has needed an edge to survive. That edge brings out the misogyny and the abuse towards her. She won’t be cowed. But to rise takes someone who has been in her football boots. That woman is Irene.

Writing their relationship has had a profound effect on me. Could I dare to invent these women, to write their characters, their dialogue? Yes, because I bothered to go. To Scotland, to absorb women’s football, which has been played there for hundreds of years. To listen.

Lazy Susan is not a lecture, far from it. There are lines and moments I want to warm your soul and stay with you. It’s part tribute to Gregory’s Girl. Not the women’s football, the sheer indefatigability of the characters. 

The Man Who Murdered Football has the feel of Scandi noir. There is caustic wind and wistfulness blowing through it, but underneath kindness and humanity, a beating heart. 

Erik is a phenomenal footballer. Tall, powerful, unique and in the world of modern football he is a commodity. Then a figurehead, then a freak, then a problem. His extraordinary amount of goals encapsulate modern football - where money talks and the big boys usually win.

A hack calls him ‘the man who murdered football’ and it sticks. There is nowhere for him to go and then the world of football starts unravelling. But was Erik really the problem?

Writing the final scene was extremely emotional, but an emboldening feeling I was using fiction to say something about elite football that needs saying.

A Tale of Two Clubs was nearly called Bridge Street. But as you’ll see from the artwork, I wanted the titles to give as many clues as possible. Let the depth come from the stories, not cryptic titles! 

This fable is about identity, how it might not lead to great things and glory, but it’s ours. Try telling a football fan their club is merging with the rivals across town. See how you get on!

And what if the clubs are at the end of the same road? In this case Bridge Street, in the town of Dunkerry in Ireland.

This is about where football came from - the history and pride and rivalry - and where American film makers want to take it. A takeover, or more specifically a merger. Documentary makers should capture a story, not construct one.

They’ve targeted an Irish community, it will work for their target audience. But what will to mean for that community - some things shouldn’t change.

The situation forces together two old adversaries, one legendary Scottish manger involved in the merger and one grumpy ex Ireland player. The pair clash all over again, but can they find common ground? 

Two of the stories work hand in hand – about referees and the controversial ‘VAR’ system.

Ref! is about football reflecting society and losing its way. A game where abuse is the norm, where shouting at a referee or from behind a keyboard is part of the culture. Where the same people who feel it’s wrong to shout at another human trying to do a job, sometimes as a volunteer, cannot stop themselves going and shouting abuse on a weekend morning afternoon. Whether elite football or grassroots.

Ref! and its main character, young official Zak, highlights the failure of authorities to actually protect staff. Their campaigns are well meaning but completely ineffective.

In the story the officials decide enough is enough and elite football is hit by a strike - but will fans ever learn the lesson? No refs, no officials, NO game.

The Check is a farce because VAR (Video Assistant Referee) is a farce. The most ludicrous, game-spoiling addition to any sport in our lifetimes.

Literally introduced for ‘clear and obvious errors’ (their words not mine) it’s turned so many people I know away from the top levels of football.

The only way to tackle it is in a light-hearted manner, which brings out the naughtiness in my writing. A VAR check at a big match turns into an investigation that gets out of control, ending up way beyond the original incident. 

This isn’t for anyone who turns up to a game of football wanting to see a simple game of football - not a geometry or science lesson for the benefit of pedants and killjoys. 

Superstition is designed to make you smile. With a bit of luck.

It’s about the way superstition plays a part in so many of our lives, the little rituals, and the big ones, how they can become an integral part of matchday.

From lucky socks to lucky seats, lucky players, lucky breaks. But what happens when the luck runs out for Eddie and Villa?

Tie a Yellow Scarf finds a football club in an unusual crisis - they are being held hostage by a tree!

Where do these stories come from? The first report I ever made for TV, 30 years ago, about a club being held hostage, yep, by a tree. Its protected status meant the club couldn’t be promoted. Ambition and dreams were ruined.

Do you settle for what you’ve got, or demand more. Is there a way out?

The story has a common theme in my writing, the deep respect between two people at different stages of life.

Story nine is the most personal, and almost provided the title of the entire first collection; 

I Wear Eleven- Eleven is the shirt number Danny wears as a schoolboy footballer trying to find his place on the pitch and his place in the world, stuck on the left wing keeping his head down while the action and the spotlight takes place elsewhere.

He’d learned to keep his head down and not rock the boat during his time around his father’s gangster friends as a kid growing up in a rough part of south London.

But what if he found his voice? What if Danny had more to offer. He might surprise you. And the best might be yet to come.

Finally the last of this first collection. Golden Eras. I loved writing this story, I was at my most ebullient, and I hope it’s contagious. It is a sign of some of my writing to come.

This is about the things they have taken away from you, that you miss. The things they have taken away from society that you miss. 

There’s nothing wrong with missing gentler, more peaceful times. Things that work. Such as politeness. and newspapers before they became so pointless and poisonous.

Brian and Quentin are determined to bring some things back. And do it with humour, grace and camaraderie. 

I want Golden Eras to be a comfort blanket. I want it to make your heart sing. And to raise a defiance in you too. That nostalgia shouldn’t be shamed, it’s more shameful to deny us nostalgia. We are human and miss good things. It doesn’t mean we are ‘living in the past’, or that good things won’t be found in the present and future too.

All ten stories have elements drawn from real stories in or around football. I kept my eyes and ears open. And my heart.

I hope you enjoy reading Football Fables as much as I did writing them….

Lee Wellings,

September, 2023