What a Shot!

Pitch Publishing is a fantastic imprint.
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James Brown, The Late Tackle, talkSPORT

Pitch Publishing show the way for enterprising
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The Sports Bookshelf.com

Pitch Publishing, an outfit whose "pitch perfect"
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Boxing Monthly

Pitch capture the real spirit of sport with entertaining
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Paul Hayward, The Daily Telegraph

Pitch have enabled me to write in the ways I enjoy most.
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Tim Quelch, Good Old Sussex by the Sea, Orient to the Emirates, Underdog!

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The process of working with Pitch to produce Picking up the Threads
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John Chandler, Picking up the Threads

Pitch will take a chance on books that other publishers won't
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Steve Menary, Outcasts!

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David Tossell, Tony Greig, The Great English Final, Grovel!, Natural

Pitch have been an absolute joy to work with,
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Sam Pilger, Ashes Match of My Life

Pitch took our original concept and further enhanced it,
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make Got, Not Got one of the football books of the year for 2011.

Derek Hammond, Got, Not Got series of books

Pitch bought into the concept of development through football,
channeling profits and proceeds from Eleven into helping
some of the most disadvantaged young people in the world.

Steve Fleming, Eleven

In the highly competitive world of sport publishing,
Pitch have consistently demonstrated the happy
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Neil Dunkin, Anfield of Dreams

18 Nov

What a Shot!

Ahhh, nostalgia! What a Shot! is an evocative collection of fans' snaps of days out at the football – mostly taken from the terraces, back in the 70s and 80s, but artfully augmented by images captured against the fast-disappearing, idiosyncratic backdrop of jumble-sale stands, dilapidated floodlight pylons, curious ticket sheds and souvenir barrows.

Football fans love nothing more than faded snapshots of crumbling grounds, distant players toiling in mud and fences topped with razor-sharp spikes – all snapped from the terraces in the belief that the results would prove worthy of the back page when they arrived back from the developers. At least, that’s certainly true of fans of a certain vintage.

When ‘70s and ‘80s photos taken from the stands and terraces were posted on the Got, Not Got: The Lost World of Football blog, traffic tripled overnight and floods of snaps were mailed in from all over Britain. The artistic value of the pics is hilariously mixed, featuring the overexposed back of many a feather cut... but, blown up big, many can take on a strange and wonderful power.

For kids like those pictured here meeting their heroes in full kit – now grown men – these images of cavernous Kops, blurred speedy wingers, floodlights and inflatables offer an evocative window into a Lost World of Football... from a fans’ eye view.

Click here for more information on What a Shot! including a sneak-preview sample of the book - and follow us on twitter as we'll be tweeting more images via @PitchPublishing and @GotNotGot.