No one has experienced Newcastle United quite like Paul Ferris.
Across three distinct roles – player (1981–1986), physiotherapist (1993–2003), and a member of Alan Shearer’s coaching staff in 2009- Ferris built a unique, behind-the-scenes perspective of life at St James’ Park. Now, the Lisburn-born author is earning recognition far beyond football, with his latest memoir shortlisted for the prestigious Sports Entertainment Book of the Year award.
The football-obsessed boy from a Lisburn council estate brings that extraordinary journey to life in Once Upon a Toon: 18 Years Inside Newcastle United, a light-hearted, often hilarious, and deeply reflective account of his years at the club. The shortlist nod marks another milestone for Ferris, already a bestselling author thanks to previous memoirs, The Boy on the Shed and The Magic in the Tin.
In Once Upon a Toon, Ferris recounts unforgettable encounters with some of football’s biggest names, including his boyhood hero Kevin Keegan.“I never played with a footballer more professional than Kevin Keegan,” Ferris writes. “He trained like a demon every day… my boyhood idol didn’t disappoint in the flesh.”
But their relationship didn’t begin smoothly. As a young player, Ferris recalls being caught taking a shortcut during a gruelling pre-season run. “In my first preseason I was caught cheating… and got a clip round the ear from Kevin Keegan, my footballing hero.”
Once Upon a Toon, Paul Ferris’ memoir has been shortlisted in the Sports Books of the Year Awards 2026
This is just one of the many unforgettable anecdotes in Once Upon a Toon: 18 Years Inside Newcastle United, the latest book by Paul Ferris, bestselling author of The Boy on the Shed and The Magic in the Tin.
In his footballing memoir, Ferris revisits the club and city that shaped his life—and reveals what happens when a boyhood dream collides with the reality of professional football.
Ferris was just 16 when he made his debut for Newcastle United in 1981, making him the club’s youngest ever first-team player. Billed as the “new George Best”, his talent was real—but so too was the brutal fragility of football, after a devastating knee injury cut short his career.
Ferris returned to the club as a physiotherapist in the 1990s, then later joined Alan Shearer’s backroom team in 2009. Over nearly two decades, he witnessed the Magpies’ dramas from every angle: dressing rooms, dugouts, and treatment tables.
“It was a very different place back then,” he says of football in the 1980s. “I got ringworm in my first few weeks just from wearing someone else’s filthy socks.”
While marquee names like Keegan, Dalglish, Gascoigne, Robson and Shearer leap from the pages, the heart of Once Upon a Toon lies in the quieter stories. Ferris shines a light on those who rarely feature in football memoirs—the tea man, the long-serving kit man, the unsung lifeblood of a club.
“There was a guy called Bill who made tea that was a work of art,” Ferris recalls. “And Joe Harvey, the former manager who showed me incredible kindness when I wrecked my knee. I wanted to give those people their moment.”
Newcastle United boarding a plane bound for Bermuda in 1985. Paul Gascoigne is to the left of Paul Ferris on the steps
The result is a book that is often laugh-out-loud funny—Alan Shearer being afraid of the dark is a standout—and occasionally gut-punch poignant. There are raw reflections on seeing George Best drunk and barely coherent before a match—a far cry from the balletic genius he once idolised.
“I had a moment when I was in the same place as him when he was playing for Hibs, and I was subbing the game. He was maybe 38-years-old, I suppose, at the time, and he just did this one little thing, and it was almost like a ballet dancer, it looked incredible. It was all just fluid, it was like poetry, his balance was incredible.”
On that day, Best was sober and offered Paul some “predictable but good advice” – “Don’t get caught up with the drinking and all that goes with it. Just play your football.”
Paul Ferris carried out the medical when Alan Shearer signed for Newcastle United in 1996, and the pair have remain firm friends ever since
He met Best some 10 years later in a Belfast hotel, where he was “so drunk he could barely speak”.
“He played in the game three hours later. As he entered the field of play, I’m not sure he knew where he was….It was too painful to watch.”
Football is a harsh world. You’re only ever one injury away from it all ending
— Paul Ferris
Ferris doesn’t shy away from addressing football’s money problem either. As a teenage professional, he earned £175 a week—“mostly spent on dreadful clothes and a top-of-the-range teasmade for my bemused parents.” Today’s Premier League stars earn that every few minutes.
Still, he’s pragmatic. “It had to change,” he says. “Back in the day, all the money went to the club owners. Jackie Milburn was getting the bus to the game and then going down the mine on Monday. That wasn’t right either.”
What concerns him more is what happens to young players without the grounding to cope with sudden wealth. “The ones who thrive—like Shearer—have solid backgrounds.
“The others? You’d see them come in stinking of drink, crashed two cars in a week, girl trouble… it was, and still is, football’s problem. But I don’t begrudge them, and I think absolutely the people who are the entertainers, the people who are on the field, the money should be going there.”
Despite the hard edges and harsh realities of the football world, Ferris’s memoir captures something rare: tenderness.
“In the 80s it felt macho, even brutal at times,” he says. “But underneath that, there was vulnerability too. Because football is a harsh world. You’re only ever one injury away from it all ending.”
The Sports Entertainment Book of the Year is decided by the public. To vote visit: http://sportsbookawards.com/vote. Voting closes on May 7, 2026.