Waddington, Director of a Working Man's Ballet is a biography of the former Stoke City manager, Tony Waddington, one of the most underrated figures in 60s and 70s football. It charts how a man with the appearance of an urbane bank manager belied the stereotype of the hard-nosed football manager as he turned around the fortunes of an ailing club on the brink of going out of business. Instead, Waddington led the Potters to promotion, secured the club's first major trophy and challenged for a league title in a season bedevilled by bad luck, before a financial calamity led to his departure. An advocate of free-flowing football, yet fielding some of the most uncompromising defensive players of his era, he reinvigorated old pros, inspired young players and won the adulation of a generation of fans. Tony Waddington, or 'Waddo' as he was affectionately known to fans and players alike, achieved all this as the director of what he fondly termed 'a working man's ballet'.

John Leonard is a news and sports journalist of more than three decades' standing, having worked at ITN first as a sports news editor and then as a programme editor for both ITV News and 5 News. John is the author of Fair Game?, which explored the history of the clash between sport and politics. A lifelong Stoke City fan, he himself enjoyed a brief, ill-starred sporting career as an athlete with Staffordshire Moorlands AC.