The Arsenal Stadium Mystery

I have at last watched this movie, a period piece which shows how much both football and film-making have changed in the last seventy years.

The mystery element is quite lively. A big football match has been arranged between Arsenal and ‘the Trojans’, a fictitious amateur team. The amateurs include a player called Doyce, whose talents extend beyond the soccer pitch to making enemies right, left and centre. Having scored an equaliser, he keels over in mid-pitch before the game is over, and after being carried off is found to be dead. Sensation - murder at Highbury!

It’s a fun film, and also a reminder of how tricky it is to write a truly convincing full-length mystery about football. I speak from experience – in my early twenties, I wrote a never-to-be-published novel about the game, called Dead Shot. I ran out of money to pay the typist I’d hired when she was on about chapter five, so the rest of the handwritten manuscript never got typed. Probably just as well….