Almanac Book Reviews: ‘The Eye of the Dragonfly,: My Life Seeing the World Through Sport’ – Tracey Lee Holmes
The Eye of the Dragonfly: My Life Seeing the World Through Sport
by Tracey Lee Holmes
Simon & Schuster, Sydney, 2025
ISBN 9781761428685
RRP $36.99
Reviewed by Roy Hay
Tracey Lee Holmes is one of the best sports journalists and this book reflects her stellar career with its highlights and low lights and the depth of her understanding of sport and its presentation across multiple media. She has been a trailblazer for women in an overwhelmingly male world. She has a deep sense of the relative value of whatever subject she is tackling, though even she may slightly underestimate the impact of the Matildas on Australian society and the ways in which it has been analysed and presented. Fiona Crawford’s The Matilda Effect remains the best place for that.
Tracey Holmes and her partner Stan Grant have been responsible for some of the most incisive coverage of a bewildering range of issues from war zones to boardrooms and sports fields in multiple countries. She has been a mentor to a generation of aspiring young journalists drawing on her own experience to guide them through the difficult early years in this cutthroat profession where the scoop means survival, at least temporarily.
There is a refreshing absence of jargon, and the writing is taut and to the point like all good journalism as you might expect in the hands of an experienced writer who gives credit to her own editorial team. The book is a good model for anyone attempting to tackle an autobiography, especially one in which sport is the main theme.
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thank you for sharing this review, Roy
I have just picked up a copy of Tracey’s book and have only read a few pages at this stage
I used to really enjoy Tracey’s ‘The Ticket’ podcast, as well as Tracey on Grandstand, back in the day …
I’m just listening to this (link) of a Tracey interview as we speak –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBPEi5otF7c
take care
RITV
Thanks Russel. The podcast is a brilliant addition and/or introduction to the book.
Roy
Tracey Holmes would come through the speakers into our kitchens, sheds, gardens, cars, studies, bathrooms and wherever else you took your portable radio. (I never had the one in a leather case like Dad did). Sports nuts didn’t want to miss anything. Now we have unlimited digital options and can get what we want when we want it. For a woman to be anchoring ABC Grandstand was progressive in those days (the 90s). Sports broadcasting had moved on from the days when Gary Ord sat at the desk on 4QR. Tracey was on a panel with Lex Marinos and Martin Flanagan in about 1996. That panel was instrumental in convincing me that sport was a serious and worthy subject for a writer and researcher to pursue.
I agree with Roy, that this is an excellent book about an interesting time – commerce and the internet have had major impacts on how we intersect with the sporting world (including our own sport).
Tracey and I were sometimes on the same Offsiders panel. Her inclusion meant for thoughtful analysis and considered opinions some of which challenged mainstream understandings.But that was the original idea of Offsiders. To get three views on matters of sport (especially in its social context) from outside the bubble of commercial, elite sport. These days the Offsiders approach has changed, however unwittingly. It’s now, “What should we think about this issue?” And often from inside the bubble of commercial sport.
I read Tracey’s book in the lead-up to the Dunkeld Writers Festival where audiences really appreciated her sessions. It was great to catch up with her. It’s a while since we have appeared on Offsiders.