Non-League Supporters' Guide & Yearbook 2016 by John Robinson

Book review: I use this book as a quick reference guide for info on the 68 National League clubs. These are the most interesting pages in the book. The other pages contain fixtures for the season, and the results for the previous season including all FA Vase and FA Trophy results.

There are some good things about this book:

• It is lightweight so can be carried around easily if you are travelling to the stadiums for matches.
• It was interesting to look at the pictures of the stadiums of the National League clubs and see how small some looked and how big others looked.
• The back cover lists the other books Soccer Books publish and some of those look interesting.

But I had some disappointments too:

• Only National League clubs are profiled, so not all non-league clubs are covered, although the small-print on the cover does hint at this.
• For some teams the record attendance statistic only shows a figure with a date, yet no opponent, e.g. Nuneaton Town: 3,111 (2nd May 2009). I'd like to know the opponent and for some teams this info is given, which is inconsistent.
• The record attendance given for Nuneaton Town above is wrong, it is actually 3,480 v Luton Town on Feb 22nd 2014. This is easily found out online so I am surprised that this hasn't been updated, especially considering this book has annual updates.
• Other inconsistencies I found in the book include the founded date given for clubs. For Nuneaton Town their founded date is given as "1937 (Reformed 2008)" but this overlooks the fact that the 1937 club was itself reformed from an earlier Nuneaton formed in 1889. And if you include reformed dates why are AFC Telford United given a founded date as 2004 when they are a reformed club too?

Back cover

So you can see I found data inconsistencies and inaccuracies without even having to delve too deeply. Hopefully the other info in the book is correct, especially the travelling info, otherwise fans might end up in the wrong place, just like my mate and I when he set his Sat Nav to take us to MK Dons and we ended up at the National Hockey stadium although they had moved to stadium:MK by then. We were late for that match.

Other things I would have liked - colour pics instead of black and white ones and full stadium pics (maybe aerial, or panoramic) rather than just of one stand like most of these are. As it is the contents in this book can be found on the internet, with the internet contained more information, which is probably more accurate and more up-to-date too (e.g. for re-arranged fixtures). So use the internet is my advice.

Publication date: 5 August 2015

Available to buy on AMAZON