The Call (Paperback)

'The Footy field: ground of coexistence; common ground; sacred turf. It is the one piece of Australian earth where equality rules and the game is played fair. It's footy. No-one barracks for the extinguishment of this game. Like a stab pass to a leading full-forward, Flanagan shows us the way to our goal.' Patrick Dodson 'The sands of time are cruel to the sportsman who had thought himself immortal. It's a rousing story - a voyage into the interior of many things.' Peter Roebuck 'Wills called getting drunk having a bushfire. Burn off the old growth, he would say, by way of a toast, Welcome the new.' Thomas Wentworth Wills is an Australian Icarus. Having grown up among the Djabwurrung people in western Victoria, he was sent to the Rugby school in England. Returning in 1856, he promptly revolutionised colonial cricket and opened the door for the evolution of the indigenous game we know as Australian football. In 1866, he coached the Aboriginal team which later became the first Australian cricket team to tour England, despite having suffered in the war being fought at the country's frontiers between white settlers and the land's Aboriginal inhabitants. Tom Wills d