1 Hawthorn Boogie Rap CD Launch Day
2 Happy Hour at the Lord Tennyson
3 Preliminary Final Day
4 HDJFL Grand Final Day
5 Brownlow Medal Day
6 Bloodbath Anniversary Day
7 Magpie Moomba Magic Days
8 Parade Day
9 Grand Final Eve
10 Grand Final Day
Back to top
Reviews
A
Welcome Addition
Alan Wearne: Kicking in Danger
Robert Pascoe (academic)
Overland,
No. 150, Autumn 1998
Colleagues, including the editor of the illustrious
Overland, are wont
to complain that
reading
The Winter Game,
my
social history of Australian football, is rather like being stuck in
one of those endless pub conversations which goes on and on, without
any pause which might allow an interruption, another voice offering a
verbal route out of the all-enveloping, ceaseless and neverending,
never-tiring discourse on the Great Australian Game which for most
months of the year threatens to engulf and suffocate everyone living in
Melbourne: this novel would have the same effect on the
‘unbelievers’,
those, like the journalist writing in the American magazine
Fortune who is
quoted as saying
recently that Melbourne would have featured much higher on his list of
desirable cities in which to live were it not for the endless talk of
football (and which school you had attended when growing up), but for
those of us who do believe, and are passionate, and never stop yarning
and spinning tales of footballers, and their alleged deeds, and
misdeeds, this novel is a welcome addition to the not-very-long shelf
of fictional works which take that endless conversation from the pubs
and hairdressing salons to the printed page...
Back to top
Crime Fiction
Out Of Bounds
Kicking
In Danger
J.R. Carroll
Australian Book Review,
No. 197, December 1997/January 1998
A kidnapping forms the
centrepiece of
Alan Wearne’s
Kicking
in Danger,
an Australian Rules mystery bearing the
imprimatur of such
diverse
luminaries as Ron Barassi and Peter Craven. The only other football
mystery I know about is
Death
in the
Back Pocket, which failed to kick a goal, but thankfully
Wcarne’s tilt is much more successful. He is better known for
his epic
verse novel
The
Nightmarkets,
but with this book he has shown his true colours, which are red and
black. A true Bomberholic, he boasts an impressive store of club lore
and trivia. In fact, sometimes the book seems to be merely an excuse
for him to flaunt his knowledge and obvious love, of the game.
The protagonist in
Kicking
in Danger
is super-sleuth to the sporting world, Damien Chubb, who was a ruckman
for Essendon in the sixties and seventies, before the advent of Simon
Madden, but the thing he is remembered most for is tangling - unwisely
- with Big Nick in the ’68 Grand Final. I was there, but must
have
missed it. Now, however, Collingwood superstar Johnny Moomba is
missing, and with the Grand Final a week away Chubb has to find him
fast. Moomba is so good he makes Gary Ablett look like a bush hack:
mega-goalkicker, hot favourite for the Brownlow and high-profile
Aboriginal activist - and he plays for Collingwood, which is a nice
ironic touch.
While Melbourne prepares itself for that last frenetic Saturday in
September, Chubb uses all his old football contacts to track down his
man. The question, of course, is not if he will find him in time, but
does Moomba want to be found? Is his disappearance a stunt, or perhaps
a political statement? Wearne makes full use of this idea as Chubb
weaves a passage through the pack, unearthing a whole host of
wonderfully eccentric types, some of whom even non-football followers
may recognise: J.J. Hobson, head-kicking president of Carlton, and a
beer baron; Danny Gallagher, a Harley-riding rap singer and media star
with blond tips who used to wear number 23 for Hawthorn - and so on.
All that’s missing is Eddie McGuire. It’s a lot of
fun, a hoot in fact,
and the finale, involving the occupation of the MCG on Grand Final Eve,
is way over the top. My only complaint about
Kicking in Danger
is that Wearne
has not been well-served by his publisher in the editorial department -
the book is absolutely full of mistakes.
Back to top
Kicking in
Danger
Tim Thorne
Famous Reporter,
No. 16,
December 1997
Black Pepper has rapidly emerged as perhaps Australia’s most
vigorous
small press publisher of poetry, presenting, to deserved acclaim, the
work of poets such as
Louis de Paor
and
Emma Lew, but what has
been less remarked upon has
been its growing fiction list.
This volume is the press’s eighth venture into fiction and
while it
makes no claim to be serious ‘high literature’, it
is great fun to read
and should sell well, especially in those parts of Australia where
Australian Rules football is a dominant feature of the culture. The
timing of its release, in the weeks leading up to the AFL finals, will
no doubt help sales.
Alan Wearne belongs to that group of writers and other intellectuals,
mostly based in Melbourne and mostly (but by no means exclusively)
male, for whom Aussie Rules is more than a casual interest and slightly
less than a religion. To his credit, he is not. unlike what appears to
be a majority of that group, a Carlton supporter.
Indeed, the hero of this novel. Damicn Chubb, Australia’s
(the
world’s?) first private eye specialising in sports, is a
former
Essendon ruckman of somewhat minor repute, who has named his son Alex
Bluey Barry (after the famous half-back line of ’62). Every
Victorian
club, however, gets a mention and is apportioned at least one character
who is either a supporter, a former player or an official. It should be
pointed out that the phrase ‘Victorian club’ is a
crucial one, and that
these clubs include South Melbourne and Fitzroy.
The significance of this, for those who do not follow the indigenous
game, is that, although
Kicking
in
Danger is set in the early 1990s, there is no mention of
the
AFL’s interstate teams, and the expansion which began with
the Swans
migrating to Sydney a decade earlier is only mooted in the book as a
rumour too ridiculous to be taken seriously. Wearne wears his heart on
his sleeve as a footy fan of the nostalgic persuasion, a traditionalist
who is set against the economic rationalism which is turning the game
into just another arm of the media moguls’ entertainment
empires, but
he doesn’t preach about this. Instead, he chooses to
construct a hybrid
world of fantasy and reality which the reader can take as given and
within which his cast of characters can be humanly real, rather that
the cyphers on corporate notepads that their
‘real-life’ counterparts
too after are.
While there are some characters based quite firmly on living people,
and while real footballers, past and present, are mentioned, what
Wearne has quite cleverly done is distil the essence of each
club’s
image into one or two characters. Thus former Geelong player Alistair
Arbuthnol is an urbane, tweedy, old-wealth anachronism from the Western
Districts, whereas Lenny Hell, the wise, kind-hearted, softly spoken,
modest publican of a modest pub, used lo play for Fitzroy.
There is plenty, too, of the world outside football. Crucial to the
novel’s plot are the Koori Lesbian Kollective, computerised
astrology,
a particularly nasty bunch of racist, anti-football skinheads, and CNN.
For all its elements of farce, and for all that it should appeal to
those whose only contact with literature is reading the
Footy Record, this
book does not
avoid issues of political, economic, even philosophical significance.
And for all that the world of footy is a macho domain, it is women who
emerge as the stronger sex, and it is a woman who, in one of the
book’s
funniest scenes, turns the Brownlow Medal award ceremony into a massive
land rights demonstration.
I have-a minor quibble with the number of misprints and misspellings.
The consistent use of ‘loose’ for
‘lose’, ‘Princess Park’ for
‘Princes
Park’ (which may, on second thoughts, have been an
intentional dig at
Carlton). some fairly haphazard scattering of commas, and most heinous
of all to a Tasmanian reader, ‘Daryl’ instead of
Darryl Baldock,
perhaps betray an unfortunate haste in production. But these are
outweighed by some great one-liners, such as ‘Football has an
entire
academic underclass’. ‘There are no Pie
[Collingwood. for the
uninitiated] supporters, there are only Pie fanatics’, and
the advice
given to Chubb at one stage to ‘just sit here, beating-up
your memories
for
Truth
or
Playboy
or
Meanjin.’
Alan Wearne has established a reputation as a major Australian poet and
his verse novel
The
Nightmarkets
is a
tour de force.
Kicking in Danger
probably won’t
even make it on to the interchange bench of the Ozlit canon, but then
literature is like football in that you can have a great time watching
the minor leagues.
Back to top
Book
Review
A novel idea to satisfy
the football
fanatic
Kicking
In Danger: A Damien Chubb Mystery
Di Lloyd
The Canberra Times,
30
November 1997
Well, it had to happen. We have had the player biographies, the
historical accounts and the world’s best football yarns, and
now we
have the Australian football novel.
The plot of
Kicking in
Danger
centres around one week - grand final week in the Australian Football
League.
But this is no ordinary grand final week, after all grand finalist
Collingwood has had its star player, Brownlow medallist, Rhodes scholar
and Aboriginal land rights activist Johnny Moomba kidnapped.
The Magpies call in former Essendon footballer and now private eye
Damien Chubb to solve the mystery.
As the mystery unravels you are introduced to an array of characters,
from J.J. Hobson, the Carlton president - who bears an uncanny
resemblance to John Elliott - to Maurie Moon the forgotten South
Melbourne star who played in the blood-bath grand final of 1945, to the
Koori Lesbian Kollective - and you need to read about them for
yourselves to understand the importance of that group.
While the book is essentially a fictional tale, it illustrates the very
real passion associated with Australian football.
The rivalry between the clubs, the passion of the supporters, the
common bond between all football people when it comes to the game they
love, and - as any Victorian would understand - the sacredness of the
MCG, not only to football, but to Melbourne as well. In fact, the MCG
is central to some of the more memorable moments of the book.
For example, at one stage it looks like the MCG is not going to be
available for grand final day and Chubb asks his son Alex for a
solution.
Alex’s reply: ‘Simple Dad, play it at
Waverley.’
Chubb takes up the story:
Those
surrounding him were chilled and, like an ice age, the enormity of his
statement rippled out to engulf the room.
From the mouth of a
relative babe:
heresy! Oedipus has been blinded, Valhalla has fallen. Liz, Liz, a
demon had entered our child, and turned him into some heinous prophet!
All adults, seeing such
a terrifying
future recoiled, some I swear swooned. This, we all thought, comes from
too many Mega Slime Lime Slurpees.
Kicking In Danger
is best
suited to the football fanatic, the one so passionate about the sport
that they can laugh at it but still respect it.
Back to top
Kicking in
Danger
Alan Wearne
Richard Harling (bookseller)
Herald Sun,
20 November 1997
Finally, a new book for AFL fans.
Kicking
in Danger is a new departure for Australian crime novels
and, it
must be said, for Australian sports writing.
It is a crime novel about footy, set in a weird time-warped Melbourne,
where Collingwood has made the grand final, and... well, the plot
really is too complex to explain and probably only AFL fans will really
appreciate it.
But if you like crime novels and love footy, then this might be the
book for you.
Back to top
Top
Shelf
Crime fiction
Kicking In Danger
Michelle Griffin
The Age, 19
October 1997
This crime caper is really just a romp through a fantasy league, where
the original 12 teams still exist, the national game is just a cloud on
the horizon, and the president of the Carlton Football Club is a
loveable old rogue. Damien Chubb, sport’s private eye, is
smart, funny
and used to play for Essendon. Wearne has a lot of fun with all the
footy archetypes, including an astrology mad North fan, a rap-singing
Hawthorn superstar and the man Chubb must find before the Grand Final:
Johnny Moomba, Collingwood full forward, Aboriginal land rights
activist, Rhodes scholar and Brownlow favourite. The plot goes off the
rails but it’s a lot of fun. Sustenance over summer.
Back to top
Paperbacks
Ian McFarlane
The Canberra Times,
12 October
1997
And now for something completely different:
Kicking in Danger,
by Alan Wearne,
has Johnny Moomba, Aboriginal land-rights activist and star
full-forward for Collingwood, disappearing during finals fever. Has
someone played the man without the ball? Damien Chubb, ex-Bombers
ruckman and private eye, investigates, and before anyone can say
‘stacks on the mill’ (a sadly defunct Aussie rules
expression for an
all-in brawl) the fun is thickening like MCG mud. Wearne’s
comic
concoction of corporate box power games and Koori Lesbian Kollectives
give new meaning to the Aussie Rules tradition of flying high. Fast
footy fun.
Back to top
Books
Kicking
In Danger
Michael Sharkey (editor)
The Weekend Australian,
4-5
October 1997
Like [John] Birmingham’s [
The
Tasmanian Babes Fiasco] cast of disparate desperates,
Wearne’s
dramatis
personae reflect a certain
metropolitan melange. But where Birmingham scours Brisbane’s
bottom-feeding social strata, Wearne embraces the social classes that
make up Melbourne’s tribes who live for football.
And where Birmingham hardly explores the possibility that any class
outside the urban lumpen-fringe dwellers could have a life worth
examining, Wearne’s narrator shows a gift for looking
appreciatively
into the minds of a beer baron, a Jewish football team manager, the
licensee of a Fitzroy pub, a serially divorced ex-Grammarian gentleman
girl-chaser and Koori lesbians. Wearne’s book displays a
sympathy for
the muesli mix that constitutes Australian (or Victorian) society,
which goes beyond Birmingham’s talented depiction of
one-dimensional
grotesques.
Chubb’s girlfriend is the straight daughter of a megalomaniac
beer
baron; Moomba’s girlfriend Dr Daisy Jackson is an Aboriginal
academic
whose articulacy is superior to any male’s in the novel;
Johnny Moomba
is, by his own admission, ‘the most calculating prick in
town’. Wearne
knocks the stereotypes around quite a bit in the earlier stages of his
novel, although he has such fun with such irresistible targets as the
International Socialists and the supremacist wackos that it’s
understandable any effort to maintain the illusion of realism gets
tossed to glory in the end. New Age lesbianism and Aboriginal mysticism
come together to provide a happy ending that lets down the
novel’s tone
a treat.
The resolution of
Kicking
in Danger
is weaker than Birmingham’s inner-Brisbane grunge
Gotterdammerung.
But if you can
hop, step and jump over the typographical minefield, you might hope
that Wearne, who made his name with
The
Nightmarkets, a book-length poem, will produce more
book-length
prose.
Back to top
books
Fun
and frolics in footy crime
Kicking
in Danger, The Footy Novel
John Collins (publisher)
The Courier-Mail,
27 September
1997
Strange title, or is it
a prophetic
one? In the ancient version of the game, no matter how bloody-minded
the affray, kicking in danger just wasn’t on. It
wasn’t footy and that
was that. So perhaps the ancient Alan Wearne is trying to tell us
something about the future. Perhaps! But we are talking Melbourne; the
town where the game is said to have begun on that strip of paddock
beside the Yarra. The strip that now encloses the G, the holy of
holies: the stadium that pretends in summer to be a cricket ground and
at other times has played host to pop stars, opera tenors and that
first Australian Olympic Games.
In a sense, it is the G that is the hero of this rather clever
entertainment where Wearne, the poet, the dyed-in-the-wool Melburnian
and obsessive football enthusiast, leaves you in no doubt that his
bizarre, fun-packed events list is somehow a deadly serious affair. But
come 2000, the timetable, like the game, is about to change because big
power outside his Melbourne has caused the date of the grand final to
be changed to fit in with the Sydney Olympics! Wearne could not have
known this when he passed the final proofs to. Black Pepper. Perhaps
that will be the scenario for a second Damien Chubb footy mystery.
Wearne, a word master, gives the action both barrels. Perhaps he
can’t
help getting just a little precious about the Brunswick end of town but
at the same time, his hatred of Carlton is palpable. He can make fun of
Collingwood and their supporters:
Let’s
face it: wide open democratic, can’t-say-no
tradition-smothered
Collingwood are such a credulous organisation. There are no Pie
supporters, there are only Pie fanatics: their eyes have galaxies of
stars shining in them and they spell out naivety. They are the least
objective of Australians: the Queensland National Party is a paragon of
rational discourse in comparison.
However, Carlton might be suspiciously close to Brunswick but it is
still home to the silvertails. Carlton, the real power centre, comes in
for some very special treatment. The cartoon character of J.J. Hobson,
the Carlton Club president, is a none too subtle image of a very famous
club president. There is sour grapes here but then Carlton once had the
unseemly habit of beating Essendon and besides, even in tribal days,
prime minister Robert Menzies was the No. l ticket-holder.
The nostalgia is strong and there’s no doubting
Wearne’s longstanding
fascination with the game. But he does fear change. He does manage to
include the interchange but only in a character cast list. And he does
include some of the recent well-known names but he has his central
character, private eye and ex-Essendon player, Damien Chubb, react with
shock when his son hears the news that the G may not be available for
the grand final.
‘Forget the G, Dad. The game’s going
national.’ That is too much for
Wearne, the patriot, to accept because he’s old school. His
league
still has only 12 teams and the Sydney Swans and the Brisbane Bears
(let alone Lions!) just haven’t happened. Tribal Melbourne is
over but
not for Wearne! I suspect he thinks the code’s heyday is
decades old,
and yet he obviously likes the present day razzamatazz. He enjoys the
North Melbourne Grand Final breakfast, the Grand City Parade and the
whiffs of money and power that have always been present but now have a
new dimension of flavour - Footy Rules, OK!
He accepts this and so sets out to entertain by inventing a plan of
action - not too difficult in a Grand Final Week - and a cast of
characters that beggars description although if you are a dedicated
follower, you’ll enjoy sifting through the subtle and not so
subtle
disguises. In this sense, it reminds me a little of
Power Without Glory,
where no
edition was complete without the key to real names. Remember when John
West (Wren) was King of Carringbush?
But for the sake of the artifice, Wearne doesn’t just cling
to the past
because his footy hero is Johnny Moomba, a Koori full forward - a
modern version of Farmer, Coleman, Winmar and Ablett rolled into one
but with the added Wearnian touch of being a Rhodes Scholar! - and it
is his kidnapping just before grand final day that begins .the
adventures of Chubb, the private eye and his many footy mates of both
sexes. It is a romp: a frolic into an imagined past/present where even
the literary magazine attached to Melbourne University, historic
Meanjin, gets a
guernsey. It is an
exercise in good fun, heavy vernacular and lots of leg pulling. But
there are barbs, because the game is serious business in Melbourne and
it is. probably (dare one say it?) in spite of its origins, becoming
similarly so in the fleshpots of the north.
Back to top
Barass
and I
Literature and football
can come
together - just ask the great Barassi
Mary Lord
The Melbourne Weekly,
16-22
September 1997
At the risk of sounding unpatriotic, I have to confess that I equate
springtime with the end of the footy season and the domination of the
media by large ocker blokes and their tiresome, crude jokes.
It’s the
thought of the slow approach of the cricket season that sustains me
through those dreary winter weekends.
On the other hand, the summer must be dreadful for hardline footy fans,
which is probably why they have that mini-competition in late summer
before the real thing begins. That’s probably also the reason
why
publishers bring out footy books towards the end of season - punters
need crutches to sustain them through the footy drought. Though I must
say it’s hard to imagine a fervent fan settling down for a
good read in
the off-season, I guess if they’re desperate enough
anything’s possible.
According to that champion of champions, Ron Barassi,
Kicking in Danger,
hot off the
presses, is ‘
the
footy novel’.
He’s probably right. Almost certainly
right. OK, he’s definitely right. I, who even standing on
uppy-toe
don’t quite reach his knees, wouldn’t want to argue
with him. Though
mild-mannered enough off the field, he is intimidatingly large and I,
frankly, am a coward.
Alan Wearne, the author of
Kicking
in Danger, is a highly acclaimed poet and best known for
writing
the prize-winning verse novel
Nightmarkets.
He may well have written
the
Australian rules novel. Not being an
aficionado
I am not really in a position to judge. I’d say that Wearne
knows the
footballers’ lingo, and genuine fans familiar with the jargon
will
really enjoy his book.
I met the great Barassi on a memorable occasion a few thousand years
ago. I was dining in a restaurant with colleagues from academia and in
came Barassi who recognised one of my friends and came over to say
hello. His friend, an historian of popular culture, introduced us with
explanatory notes which, I suppose, were intended to justify his mixing
in such stodgy company. He explained me to Barassi with an apologetic
look, saying, ‘She’s literary’. I thought
this sounded faintly
insulting but I let it go.
Barassi raised one eyebrow, then he also let it go. Or at least I
thought he did. We invited him to join us but, seeing we were almost
through our meal, he graciously declined but suggested we join him and
his companion for a drink when we’d finished. I doubt he
really meant
it; it seems unlikely that he’d enjoy being on display for
his fans
when he was out for a quiet dinner with a friend. He was merely being
polite.
But the blokes in our party insisted the great man would be deeply hurt
if we failed to take up his invitation, which, of course, we did; the
men in our party mentally rehearsing the tales they’d tell
their
students tomorrow about what they said to Barassi and what Barassi said
to them.
At Barassi’s table I stayed fairly quiet (for me) while the
others
bubbled and squawked like demented school-boys, each one showing off
for the great man. After a few minutes of this, he turned to me and
barked: ‘I thought you were supposed to be
literary!’ The others
cringed. I took a slow, deep breath. ‘Good gracious,
Ron,’ I said, with
the confiding smile of one expert to another, ‘you
don’t play football
at the table, do you?’
The great man digested that thoughtfully and after a brief pause
offered the laconic response, ‘Fair enough, darl.’
The tension in the
air subsided, everyone visibly relaxed and ‘Darl’
went down in history
as a woman with nerves of steel. It was a character-building experience
and not one I’d care to repeat. I abandoned the academic life
not long
after, though there’s probably no connection. So, I
definitely agree
with Barassi’s judgement of
Kicking
in Danger.
Back to top
Pitch
battles
Kicking
in Danger: The Footy Novel
Garrie Hutchinson (editor)
The Age, 30
August 1997
Talking about footy life imitating footy art: Alan Wearne’s
footy
fantasy features, at its climax, the MCG being taken over by a
right-wing band of thugs on grand final eve. These neo-Nazis had
previously kidnapped the greatest footballer in the land, the
problematic Aboriginal star Johnny Moomba - a combination of Krakouer,
Lewis, Winmar, Long, Rioli - and Coleman.
He was released, almost accidentally, by the sports private eye Damien
Chubb, a former Essendon player who had tried unsuccessfully to fix up
Big Nick in the 1968 grand final. The sacred site of the ’G
was to be
liberated by the collected forces of players not involved in the big
game, who, in the hours before the attacking thrust, assembled at
Victoria Park. There they were addressed by none other than the
less-than-successful coach of Desert Storm, General Schwarzkopf. In
art, the boys (and girls - a potent force in this novel is the Lesbian
Koori Kollective) succeed beyond football’s wildest dreams;
in life,
the general failed to get Collingwood over the line against Carlton.
Ah, well. The grand final is between Collingwood and Melbourne, itself
a fantasy, and Wearne does not reveal the result. Probably a draw. In
Wearne’s league, there are still 12 Victorian teams and, at
the end of
the book, South stay at South as a direct result of Chubb’s
success -
it’s enough to make you weep in memory of those palmy
Saturday
afternoons when the local tribes did meet at the Lake Oval, at Windy
Hill, or even Brunswick Street.
Ardent fans of footy will have a chuckle over the conceits, as well as
recognising the affectionate disguises of selected football
personalities, such as a certain Carlton president, and many other
Melbourne and football types and places.
I must declare an interest: years ago, I used to go to Carlton Essendon
clashes at Princes Park with the author, thereby, perhaps inspiring his
unreasoning hatred of the Mighty Blues. I was also one of a number of
people who read an early draft of this novel and offered partisan
advice - some of which has been acted upon. The story, as published, is
an improvement on what I read then, but I still have some reservations.
The storyline, even as fantasy, is both a bit obvious and hard to
follow through the occasional thickets of long, under-punctuated
sentences. And, while I love the idea of an alternative reality in
football Melbourne and like the clash of anachronisms that ensue, it
isn’t an idea that is followed through in the detail of
place,
description and character.
Wearne isn’t overly interested in character - he is kicking
around
types and stereotypes with the result that when the jokes
don’t quite
work and there is little to involve the reader. On the other hand, he
isn’t attempting crime fiction in the classical style of
time, place
and character as in Shane Maloney’s retro-Melbourne
thrillers. Wearne’s
bonk is a kind of regional
roman
a
clef in which the key to enjoying the story is a thorough
knowledge of the importance of football in Melbourne culture -
otherwise, not even
The
Footy Show
will help you.
Back to top
Literary luminaries explore
life’s little
vices
Marietta
The Bulletin,
12 August 1997
Life imitating art again? No one, according to Melbourne gossips, could
have been more surprised than author Alan Wearne to read last month in
the local daily that General Norman Schwarzkopf, Stormin’
Norman of
Gulf War fame, is addressing the Collingwood AFL team before its clash
with Carlton at the MCG. Wearne, in his new novel,
Kicking in Danger,
just published
by Black Pepper, already has the tactically brilliant Schwarzkopf doing
just that before the grand final. However, he also has kidnappers
running off with the star Collingwood full forward, and the Magpies
hiring private eye Damien Chubb to track them down... Might be
advisable say the wags, to keep the Rocca brothers under wraps!
Back to top
Readings
Higher Education
Peter Craven
The Weekend Australian,
1997
That writer of political verse epics, Alan Wearne, has an extract from
his long work in progress, which intertwines a set of stories, a trick
we associate with Chaucer in verse and Boccaccio in prose. Prose is
Wearne’s elected medium in his new book,
Kicking in Danger,
which comes with
the words of the great Ron Barassi quoted on the front cover:
‘The
footy novel’.
Wearne is best known for his first novel
The Nightmarkets, a
story of
politics and the shadow it casts on everyday life, which was compared
by Jack Hibberd to both James Joyce and C. J. Dennis.
Kicking in Danger
is from the other
end of Bourke Street, a comic thriller about Australian Rules which
involves, among other things, a not-entirely-lovable black Collingwood
star called Johnny Moomba. The Koori lesbian feminist collective call
him Johnny Hardword because that’s what he puts on people.
The story
involves a kidnapping and it has as its detective a former footballer
called Damien Chubb.
Wearne’s world of Australian Rules is one in which the VFL
has never
transmuted into the AFL and where football history has developed in a
counter-factual universe, though it also includes portraits of some not
unfamiliar characters who have splendoured or made miserable the game.
Famous brewers and the like.
When
The Nightmarkets
appeared more than a decade ago, Mungo McCallum, the political
journalist, said he thought it would become a cult book. It will be
interesting to see if this fate overtakes Wearne’s attempt at
pulp
fiction.
Back to top