Stramash!

Fatigued by bloated big-game football and bored of a samey big cities, Daniel Gray went in search of small town Scotland and its teams. At the time when the Scottish club game is drifting towards its lowest ebb once more, Stramash singularly falls to wring its hands and address the state of the game, preferring instead to focus on Bobby Mann's waistline. Part travelogue, part history and part mistakenly spilling ketchup on the face of a small child, Stramash takes an uplifting look at the country's nether regions. Using the excuse of a match to visit places from Dumfries to Dingwall, Gray surveys Scotland's towns and teams in their present state. Stramash accomplishes the feats of visiting Dumfries without mentioning Robert Burns, being positive about Cumbernauld and linking Elgin City to Lenin. It is ae fond look at Scotland as you've never seen it before.

Daniel Gray Daniel Gray is the author of Homage to Caledonia: Scotland and the Spanish Civil War.He has also written on football for When Saturday Comes and Fly Me To The Moon, the fanzine of his beloved Middlesbrough FC, and is a book reviewer for History Scotland and The Skinny, and also writes for the magazines The Leither and Scottish Labour Review. He is a 2003 Politics and History graduate of Newcastle University. His first book, the Historical Dictionary of Marxism, was published in 2005.He is yet to sell the film rights. Gray has worked as a researcher, contributor and writer on BBC radio and on STV's miniseries The Scots Who Fought Franco. He lives in Leith with his wife Marisa.