Tom Watt - Football Shorts

Shelby Town are a fictional football team who play in the real-life Barclays Premier League. Theyre also the team that feature one way or another in all the stories youre about to read. Town have a bit in common with a lot of real clubs, like Wigan, Blackburn, Norwich and Reading, to name just a few.

Shelby is a town somewhere in the middle of England, halfway between London and Birmingham. Supporting Town has been pretty exciting lately. Fifteen years ago, they were playing non-league football in the old Vauxhall Conference. Like at so many smaller clubs, money was tight and the players were semi-professional. But then a local businessman, Ernest Carstairs, bought the club, paid off its debts and gave the manager some money to spend on the team. Since then, Shelby Town havent looked back. Under boss Mick Diamond, they climbed through the divisions and then, a couple of years ago, won the Championship Play-Off Final at Wembley.

The hero at Wembley was the clubs longest-serving player, skipper Dave Morgan. Town taking a place in the Premier League was a dream come true for Dave and for everyone connected with the club.

Mick Diamond trusted the boys whod got Town promoted, but he brought in a couple of overseas stars to strengthen the squad: French midfielder Jean-Pierre Vert and Nigerian striker Dotun Odegbame. And lads like Stuart Dolan come through from the youth team to make their mark in the Premier League too.

Against all the odds and despite the pundits saying they were relegation certainties Shelby Town survived. In fact, that first season in the Premier League the club reached the Carling Cup final.

You may have read about Town and the personalities behind the scenes in the Double Club English and Maths textbooks used in many schools in recent years.

Its been an incredible journey for the players, the staff and the fans: for everyone at Shelby Town, in fact, including Ernest, Mick, Dave, Dotun, Stuart and Jean-Pierre. Now read on. The storys only just begun

Tom Watt is an actor who also writes books. Mostly about football. His last big one was called 2010: When the World Cup Came to South Africa. He invented the club in Football Shorts, Shelby Town, for some textbooks he wrote for the Double Club programme for schools. He writes regularly for the Arsenal match programme and is currently working on a football-based feature film.

Vincent Kompany was born in Uccle in Belgium and started his career at Anderlecht, where he played for three years before moving to Hamburg in Germany. In 2008 he joined his current team, Manchester City, and won the Premier League with them in 2012. Vincent is currently captain of both City and Belgium and is a FIFA Ambassador for the charity SOS Childrens Villages.

Nick Hornbys Fever Pitch, which describes his own life growing up as an Arsenal fan, is one of the best adult novels ever written about football and was made into a very successful film. Nick has published several other equally best-selling books and screenplays, including About a Boy, High Fidelity and Slam, his novel about a teenage skateboarder named Sam.

Tom Rosick is one of the Czech Republics most talented players ever. He was born in Prague and played for Sparta before moving to Germany, when he joined Borussia Dortmund, and then to the UK in 2005 when he signed for Arsenal. Tom has won nearly ninety international caps and has captained his country at both the European Championships and the World Cup.

Mal Peet grew up in Norfolk, which explains why he supports Norwich City. His books have won more cups than the Canaries, like the Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Childrens Fiction Prize. Hes written three football novels: Keeper, The Penalty and Exposure. The character Paul Faustino, who features in Mals story here, actually has his own website. Google it!

Matt Holland had a fantastic career as a midfielder for Bournemouth, Ipswich, Charlton and the Republic of Ireland, scoring for Ireland against Cameroon at the 2002 World Cup. It turns out that Matt is as good at talking about football as he was at playing it, so he now works as an expert pundit for just about every radio and TV station you can think of.

Alan Sefton has worked at Arsenal for over twenty-five years and is head of the clubs award-winning community department. Based at the Emirates Stadium, Alan and his staff use football as a way to connect people of all ages and backgrounds, especially teenagers, using schemes like the Arsenal Double Club literacy programme.

Curtis Davies was born in Leytonstone in London and made his debut for Luton Town when they were still in the Football League. Since then he has played for West Bromwich Albion, Aston Villa, Leicester City and Birmingham City, where hes been since 2011. Curtis made his international debut at centre half for the England Under-21s in 2006 and has been in full squads since without winning his first cap yet.

Faye White grew up in Horley in Surrey. She plays centre back and is one of English footballs most decorated players, having won nearly thirty trophies as captain of Arsenal Ladies and captaining for England at four major tournaments. Faye was awarded an MBE in 2006 for her services to football and had to retire from playing because of injury earlier this year.

Alan Davies is a comedian, writer and actor who is probably best known as the star of the TV detective series Jonathan Creek and the film Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging, as well as being a permanent panellist on the quiz show QI. Alans latest book is called Teenage Revolution and is about growing up in the 1980s.

Hilary Freeman is a writer who lives in Camden Town in North London, and shes written five novels. The latest is called The Boy From France and is the third in a series called Camden Town Tales. As well as writing, Hilary is an agony aunt for newspapers and magazines. As she supports Arsenal, she knows all about agony

Tom Palmer was born in Leeds and supports Leeds United. His first novel, Foul Play, was shortlisted for the Blue Peter Book Award, and he is the official author of the Premier League Reading Stars scheme. Look out for White Fear the latest title in Toms new series of football stories, The Squad, which is out now.

Paul Cookson is the poet in residence at the National Football Museum. He writes poetry for children and adults and had two new collections out last year, Give Us a Goal! and Saturday Men. Paul performs his poems live at festivals, on the radio and in thousands of schools and libraries all over the country. He also entertains audiences (and drives his family mad) by playing the ukulele.

Terry Deary was born in Sunderland and still supports his hometown club. He has written around 200 books over the past thirty-five years, most of them for children, and is also an actor, playwright and scriptwriter. Terry is most famous for creating the Horrible Histories books, which have been made into a hugely popular TV series as well as a stage show, a computer game and even a virtual world.