Y Lolfa publishers announced this week that Who Beat the All Blacks? by Alun Gibbard has been shortlisted for the coveted 2013 British Sports Book Awards-one of the key events in the publishing and sporting calendar.
Published in October to celebrate 40 years since Llanelli beat the All Blacks, Who Beat the All Blacks?is now in its third edition and will compete against a ‘who’s who’ from sport and literature at the Awards, which are a celebration of the very best in sports writing.
The 11th annual British Sports Book Awards will be staged at Lord’s Cricket Ground on 21 May, and the awards will be split into nine categories representing the most high profile sports in the UK. Who Beat the All Blacks? will be competing against Geordan Murphy’s autobiography for the Rugby Book of the Year award, and books by Sir Bradley Wiggins and Lord Sebastian Coey are amongst other shortlisted titles.
“I’m over the moon!” says Welsh author Alun Gibbard. “Sports books are so popular these days, and the market is a competitive one – I’m so glad that the book is getting such recognition. I wouldn’t have imagined this happening as a 12 year old watching the game in Stradey Park!
“It’s great to know that the book was chosen by other authors and journalists,” adds the author. “I’m so glad on behalf of Y Lolfa, because this goes to prove that they can publish books that compete against well-known British publishers who have considerably larger budgets! I’m also glad on behalf of the Llanelli rugby team – it’s great that their success, as a rugby team from a town in west Wales, gets wider acknowledgement by the sporting world.
“I was determined not to write a rugby book when I started writing it,” Gibbard explains further. “I didn’t want to just publish a report on the game. Instead, I wanted to show how important that game was to Welsh rugby and the country’s culture. Rugby is much more than an 80-minute game and I wanted to convey that in the book.”
After the individual category winners have been announced on 21 May, an online public vote will determine the Overall British Sports Book of the Year. The public vote will held on the official website -www.britishsportsbookawards.co.uk.
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