Page "Gordon Banks" Paragraph 43

Best-selling Irish investigative author, Don Mullan, published a boyhood memoir in 2006 called GORDON BANKS: A Hero Who Could Fly in which he wrote about the influence of the England goalkeeper on his life.

Mullan discovered at the age of 8 that he was dyslexic, but he had learned to read and write through a giant 500-page scrapbook which he began compiling shortly after seeing Banks play in the 1966 World Cup Final.

The Irish author grew up in the famous Republican stronghold of the Creggan Estate, Derry, Northern Ireland, at the height of the troubles and was a schoolboy witness to the tragic events of Bloody Sunday, 30 January 1972.

In his moving tribute to Banks he claims that his English hero was one of the reasons why he never choose the path of violence.

Banks launched Mullan's book in Dublin, Derry and at the Britannia Stadium in Stoke in the Summer of 2006 and has described Mullan as ' my greatest fan '.

GORDON BANKS: A Hero Who Could Fly was optioned by BBC Drama.