Grand Slam

by Alan English and the Irish rugby team (Penguin), 256 pages, €24.99

Rating: 4/5

You won't find a better looking sports book than this all year. This is just a lovely thing to hold in your hand. The pictures by Billy Stickland and the rest of the Inpho agency photographers aren't just an adornment, they're key to the whole piece of work.

Of course, generally when a review starts off with the damning faint praise of declaring a book to be beautifully produced, it's a prelude to running down the actual substance. Not here. Alan English has put together a highly enjoyable behind-the-scenes account of the Grand Slam season, from the arrival of Declan Kidney through the now famous meeting in Enfield before Christmas of last year and on to each of the five matches. By turns funny, dramatic and insightful, it tells what is already a great story with considerable skill and joy.

What you get here is a fairly rounded picture of some of the personalities of these players and their coaches. Now, the caveat naturally has to be that these are their own carefully-chosen words and the story as they want to tell it doesn't automatically correlate to the story as it was. But there are enough small details here for it all to ring true, things like Tommy Bowe's mother washing his father's lucky jumper the night before the team to face Wales was picked and Stephen Ferris being so exhausted after the England game that he slept on the ground for half an hour before getting on the bus.

Possibly the best insight you get, however, is into the peculiar brand of genius Kidney brings to his work. For over a decade now, we've all tried to stick labels on what it is that makes him such a success and this is probably as close as anyone has come, by the simple act of steering clear of labels altogether and letting his actions speak for themselves. The way he facilitates, his ability to reason out problems, to involve players and staff while remaining in authority all add up.

Little things become big things. The story of the Grand Slam, the story of this book.