Great news. My short story, ‘Neutral Ground’, has been awarded first place in The Pride and the Passion: Offside Stories Competition. This competition invited poetry and prose that explored all sides of the beautiful game. My story focuses on one of football’s darkest days, the 1989 Hillsborough disaster. Two voices, a father and son’s, narrate across a span of twenty years.

The judges were Ian McMillan, poet, presenter of R3’s beloved ‘The Verb’, and owner of that wonderful voice; and Alex Davis, editor and publisher. Here are their words on my story: ‘This story really brought to life the tragic events of Hillsborough, and the use of the time stamps and short paragraphs was very effective in showing just how quickly things turned tragic that afternoon. The writing was sharp and spare, using a careful choice of language to great effect, and more importantly it did something short stories are so good at – providing a real emotional clout. Brilliant stuff.’

Ben Wilkinson won first prize in the poetry section with a poem on John Barnes. I really enjoyed Ben’s sonnet ‘The Catch’ last month, in The Guardian’s Saturday poem series. And so, I look forward to reading the anthology.