Scratching Shed Publishing

Border City Blues is the previously untold story of rugby league football in the proud Cumbrian city of Carlisle. Author Alan Tucker - a former chairman of the club - shares his inside view of the highs and lows and ups and downs of life in English rugby league’s most northerly outpost. Complete with an introduction by the New Zealand rugby league legend Dean Bell, the bulk of the book is a season-by-season account of the city’s longest-surviving professional outfit, Carlisle Border Raiders. From their birth in the early-1980s to ‘merger’ with Barrow in 1997, it is a dramatic story of struggle against the odds and a faithfully produced insight into just what it takes to get a new sport up and running in often quite unsympathetic territory. Added to this is a detailed statistical analysis of every season in the Border Raiders’ existence, including league tables, match-by-match records and individual player contributions. Border City Blues also takes care to acknowledge the history of amateur rugby league in Carlisle, courtesy of the city’s junior, ladies and open-age teams. And it brings the story right up to date with the post-1997 launch of the Carlisle Centurions summer conference set-up. The book also provides short histories of the city’s original thirteen-a-side club, Carlisle City, who flared briefly in 1928; and the amateur side of the same name in 1950-52. All in all, this is a valuable and timely addition to the rugby league bookshelves that no treasurer of sporting heritage should be without.