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NEVER AGAIN BOOK REVIEW - September 1995

Never Again documents the traumatic 1994-95 season of Aberdeen, latterly one of Scotland's top clubs and the only Scottish team outside of the Old Firm never to have been relegated. From the previous season's runners-up position, the Dons plummeted to the bottom of the Premier Division, eventually surviving via a play-off after a remarkable fightback in the last six games. Along the way they also managed to go out of the UEFA Cup in the first round to the mighty Latvians of Skonto Riga (cough) and lose to the Scottish Second (ie Third) Division side Stenhousemuir in the Scottish Cup (for perspective, imagine Man Utd taking a thrashing from Grimsby).

The book isn't a chronological log of the season, but a collection of impressions and feelings, mostly from the authors of the Red Final fanzine, and if, like me, you're a Rudolph who fondly recalls the heady days of the 80s (when Aberdeen largely monopolised the domestic honours scene and defeated Real Madrid in the final of the European Cup-Winner's Cup), it makes for harrowing reading, in more ways than one.

As with the fanzine itself, the quality of writing is mixed, and I'd be hard pushed to recommend much of it to anyone other than a Dons devotee (the combination of in-jokes and simplistic abuse of other teams gets wearing pretty quickly even if you are one). There are, however, a couple of chapters worthy of anyone's attention, most notably a perceptive and thoughtful one on the sacking towards the season's end of manager Willie Miller, a hero of the Pittodrie faithful for 20 years and thought of by many as the finest player ever to wear the red shirt. (I go for Gordon Strachan myself, but that's another story). The rest is heartfelt for sure, but strictly for the faithful.

VERDICT: Hard going for the unconverted, but an essential guard against complacency for Dons fans. Read and remember. **

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