The Game of Their Lives
PanMacmillan, Sydney, 2016
In 1916, two teams of Australian soldiers put on an exhibition match of football in London. Most of them were gifted athletes who had put their football on hold to enlist. Six weeks after the match, the men were on the Western Front, some of them never to return home. This is the story of the footballers who became soldiers, the game they played and the fate they met amid the carnage of World War I.
What they said:
“Nick Richardson’s book starts gently as it introduces us to the Australian Rules Footballers destined to sign up for service in the first world war, but its final impact is devastating. Bludgeoned into enlisting by a shrill pro war press and government, on the assumption that sportsmen made the best soldiers, the majority are cruelly cut down in the hell of the Western Front trenches. In 1917, 35 Australians died for every metre of ground gained. The only way many kept their sanity was to play football metres from the front line in the shell pocked stinking mud. The great game of war these athletes were promised, turns out to be the cruellest form of carnage the world had ever seen. Nick’s book is one of the strongest statements on the horror and futility of war I have ever read.”
David Williamson, screenwriter of Gallipoli.
One of the great untold stories of Australian football history…compelling …inspiring and poignant…a must read.’’
The Herald Sun
“In 1916 some of the country's finest Australian Rules footballers stepped onto the grounds of Queen's Club, in London, for an exhibition match. They were soldiers, and it was political football. Nick Richardson's engaging and extensively researched study puts the match in context, emphasising the convergence of sport and politics, and the extraordinary pressure put on elite players to enlist – to patriotically forsake the game for the greater game of war.’’
The Age/Sydney Morning Herald.
Hear ABC Conversations' host Richard Fidler discuss The Game of Their Lives with Nick here.