Title: Tom Wills: His Spectacular Rise and Tragic Fall Author: Greg de Moore Publisher: Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2008 $32.95 (pb) At the Adelaide Writers’ Week in 2006, an event internationally famous as part of Australia’s oldest Festival of Arts, I attended a literary dinner with around a dozen people of mixed sexes. The Modern [Read more]
Almanac Rugby League – Book Review: Voices from Brisbane Rugby League
August 5, 2010 by Leave a Comment
This review was previously published in Queensland Labour History http://www.boolarongpress.com.au/photos/Voices%20from%20Brisbane%20Rugby%20League%20Large%20%281%29.jpg Review of Greg Mallory, Voices from Brisbane Rugby League: Oral Histories from the 50s to the 70s, Boolarong Press 2009 Greg Mallory, and his editor, Gail Cartwright, are to be congratulated for adding to our archive of oral history collections. Like all such works, this [Read more]
Book Review: Nine Lives
August 5, 2010 by 1 Comment
Title: Nine Lives (Football, cancer and getting on with life) Author: Adam Ramanauskas with Emma Quayle ( rrp $36.99) Publisher: Penguin Viking At the age of 25, and less than a month after marrying his childhood sweetheart, AFL footballer Adam Ramanauskas sat in his doctor’s office and was told that he had cancer. For the [Read more]
Book Review: The Damned United by David Peace
July 6, 2010 by 9 Comments
David Peace, The Damned United, Faber and Faber, London, 2006, $23.95 Reviewed by Chris Riordan David Peace’s THE DAMNED UNITED is a remarkable novel. By dint of its nominal subject, Brian Clough, football manager, and his catastrophic 44 day reign at Leeds United in 1974, it is a sports book. But whilst that in itself, [Read more]
Book review: Wednesday Warriors: Doing it for the jumper: the St Pat’s Ballarat tradition
June 18, 2010 by 6 Comments
Title: Wednesday Warriors: Doing it for the jumper: the St Pat’s Ballarat tradition Author: James Gilchrist Publisher: Conor Court Publishing, Ballan, Victoria (2010) The recent launch of James Gilchrist’s excellent book on his season following the first eighteen from St Pat’s Ballarat was held at the Celtic Club in Melbourne. The venue was appropriate considering [Read more]
Book Review: Football for Boys
April 26, 2010 by 4 Comments
Book: Football for Boys Author: Alan Scott Publisher: Golden Press, Potts Point, 1971 Reviewer: Vin Maskell The perfect drop-kick I probably think of Essendon’s Barry Davis more than I think of any other footballer. I think of him every day, when I glance up at the 1971 book Football for Boys, which has pride of [Read more]
Book Review: Cats In Command
April 26, 2010 by 1 Comment
Book: Cats In Command Authors: Bruce Kennedy and Bruce Coe Publisher: self-published, Melbourne, 2010, $19.95 Reviewer: Michael Rogers What do you do when the team you barrack for hasn’t won a premiership since the early 1960s and doesn’t look like winning another one? Maybe ever. If you are two long suffering supporters of that team, [Read more]
Book Review: Get Her Off The Pitch!
April 26, 2010 by 1 Comment
Book: Get Her Off The Pitch! Author: Lynn Truss Publisher: Harper Collins, Melbourne, 2009 $27.99 Reviewer: Peter Lenaghan On the surface, this is a pithy, humorous and well-told story about an artsy journalist being thrown head-first into an almost entirely unfamiliar world of professional sport. Looking deeper, it is an exploration of identity, gender and [Read more]
Review: Callinan kicks a goal with The Merger
April 3, 2010 by 1 Comment
Readers of The Footy Almanac would recognise instantly the sensibility of Damian Callinan, the comedian whose show The Merger is on at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Callinan knows footy, every nook and cranny of it, sometimes despite himself. (His nature is to shy from the get-stuck-into-’em aspect of the game.) He’s also got an [Read more]
Review: Damian Callinan – The Merger: Sportsman’s Night 2
April 3, 2010 by Leave a Comment
Ciannon Cazaly 28 March 2010 The saga of the Bodgy Creek football club continues in this follow-up to the hugely successful Sportsman’s Night of 2000/2001. Ten year old documentary filmmaker Neil returns to check in on the fortunes of the Bodgy Creek Roosters bringing with him a cast of characters both old and new. In [Read more]
Film Review: Bullock’s Blind Side is well-meaning but misses mark
March 2, 2010 by 3 Comments
Film: The Blind Side Release: 2010 Director: John Lee Hancock Starring: Sandra Bullock, Quinton Aaron, Kathy Bates Reviewer: John Butler Anyone with an interest in the USA – and largely thanks to Hollywood, that would be many of us – would probably agree that part of the fascination lies in the many paradoxes and contradictions [Read more]
Book Review: When dreams come true
February 25, 2010 by 5 Comments
Book: Golden Boy: Kim Hughes and the bad old days of Australian cricket Writer: Christian Ryan Publisher: Allen and Unwin, Melbourne, 2009 Price: $35 Reviewer: Les Everett WESTERN AUSTRALIA is a big State but it’s a small place. In 1974, when I left Kalgoorlie-Boulder to attend Graylands Teachers’ College, 600 kilometres away in Perth, I [Read more]
Book Review: All praise to exploration of Ablett enigma
February 19, 2010 by 6 Comments
Book: Playing God: The Rise and Fall of Gary Ablett Writer: Garry Linnell Publication: HarperCollins, 2003 Reviewer: Phillip Dimitriadis Some may consider Garry Linnell’s book, Playing God: The Rise and Fall of Gary Ablett to be a work of fact-based, journalistic non-fiction. It is an unauthorised biography that at times has an unnerving mix of [Read more]
Film: Australian rules? Not at the flicks, it doesn’t
February 19, 2010 by 14 Comments
By John Butler The recent experience of watching Springboks and All Blacks do battle in a Hollywood film has prompted some general reflections on how differing cinematic cultures approach sport. More particularly, it has given me cause to consider how sport has (or hasn’t) been treated in Australian cinema. Hollywood has long been the world’s [Read more]
Film: Valentine’s Day and the Bear obsessities
February 18, 2010 by 14 Comments
By Tony Taylor Now this is how you do feel-good. Aunty’s had a couple of stabs at it this year but with Valentine’s Day we finally arrive: gorgeous family drama that’s funny, whimsical, warm-hearted and feels absolutely real. Rhys Muldoon is fab as Ben Valentine, the drifter manoeuvred into coaching a small town’s footy team, [Read more]
Film: An unreliable overview of sport on the screen
February 17, 2010 by 17 Comments
Seeing as I’ve been discussing the topic of sports films, I thought I might compile some personal favourites. I warn in advance, this list is highly subjective and far from comprehensive. I’ve included documentaries as well as cinematic features. So, in no particular order… Boxing As the most primal and basic of sporting conflicts, boxing [Read more]
Film: Full points to Cohuna-Union rivalry flick
February 4, 2010 by 23 Comments
By Paul Daffey Ivanka Buczma, a landscape architecture student at Melbourne University, had a piquant first experience of a country footy rivalry. The 20-year-old and a dozen fellow students were on a field trip in Cohuna in northern Victoria as part of their landscape heritage subject. The students, as well as two lecturers, had entered [Read more]
Film Review: Clint continues to intrigue despite playing it safe
February 3, 2010 by 10 Comments
Film: Invictus. Release: 2010. Director: Clint Eastwood. Starring: Morgan Freeman, Matt Damon. Review: John Butler. Many movie fans out there would have long recognised that Clint Eastwood has been on an extended later life roll. Long past his prime as a leading man, he’s prolifically directed (and often starred in) a string of films which [Read more]
Book Review: Krakouers biography is full of heart
January 19, 2010 by 3 Comments
Brotherboys: The story of Jim and Phil Krakouer, by Sean Gorman Reviewer: Paul Daffey As footy-mad youngsters, the Krakouer brothers’ inventive quest to improve their Aussie Rules skills included practising over the kitchen table in the family home at Mount Barker, WA. While their father Eric, one of several quiet heroes in this sad and [Read more]
Anson Cameron: Silences Come and Gone
November 27, 2009 by Leave a Comment
by Paul Mitchell Intro: Melbourne author Anson Cameron’s debut novel, Silences Long Gone, which dissects the issue of Aboriginal land rights, has received unanimous critical acclaim. A pleasing result for a man who knew himself from a young age to be a writer…but didn’t write… Drinking coffee is meant to be a relaxed, friendly pastime. [Read more]
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