FOOTBALL LIFE (1998)

“Football Life is not like any other football book. It’s a story just about any Australian family could call its own ... Walker’s memories of his family’s obsession with football act as a biography of the development of the game ... The result is a living history of fathers and sons, families and the game of life”
- Lisa Korycki, BENDIGO ADVERTISER

"Fascinating but strangely ignored" - John Clare, SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

 
Football Life is sort of a companion piece to Stranded, a personal history of one of the other great passions in my life, Australian Rules football, which was published by Pan Macmillan in 1997. It used the same blend of oral history, memoir, reportage and archival material to tell a story that wasn’t the usual one about the big time and the big stars but rather the small-time, minor league game, bush footy, the community footy that’s so shrunk in the face of the corporatisation of all sport. Pan Macmillan tried to market it on the angle it was an Australian Fever Pitch, which was a tad misleading. Surely though it softened the market for fine books to follow like Paul Daffy's Local Rites (2001) and Loose Men Everywhere, by John Harms (2002). You can read my account of putting Football Life together, published by GQ, by clicking here or on the clipping to the left...


“Walker’s probing of Australian Rules football and his own life path is endearing and gripping from the outset ... refreshingly pinpoints the game’s smaller figures and moments”
- Matthew Condon, SUN-HERALD

“A very different type of footy book - part autobiography, part history and part fanzine but it somehow all comes together ... a fascinating approach and a rewarding journey” -  Eddie Greenaway, FOOTYZINE

“Football Life is the flipside to Stranded, but this is a much better book ... it’s about how popular culture intersects with our lives, shapes it, gives it meaning” -  Andrew Stafford, ROLLING STONE

“It’s hard to imagine how a writer could capture to full gamut of footballing worlds ... Walker’s is a modest and generous account ... a significant contribution to the writing of football and an intriguing companion to (More than a Game’s) more orthodox and scholarly account” - Stephanie Holt, OVERLAND

“Walker writes with passion ... as much about Australia growing up as it is about football” -  AUSSIE POST

“I was enjoying the book. I was thinking I’d like to take this bloke out and buy him a beer when I came upon this stuff about my song. Now, I think I’ll take him out and punch him on the nose”
- Mike Brady, author of ‘Up There, Cazaly’, interviewed by Bob Hart, HERALD-SUN

“Clinton who?” - Bob Hart, HERALD-SUN