With Wanderers making history in the A-League, read about the football’s past thanks to two of Australia’s most respected historians.
Will the Wanderers be in the next edition of A History of Football in Australia: A Game of Two Halves, a book by Roy Hay and Bill Murray?
Published by Hardie Grant and available in all good bookshops in May, this book has been fourteen years in the making and comes at the time when football in Australia is ready to embrace its history at last, not to wallow in nostalgia, but to assert that it is a key part of the making of this country-s sporting landscape and its broader social history.
The book comes at a very exciting time and will be something fans of the game and people who want to learn about it will find incredibly useful in the next couple of years as Australia takes part in the World Cup in Brazil, hosts the Asian Cup of Nations in January 2015 and the Matildas seek to defend their Asian crown and qualify for the World Cup in Canada in 2015.
At home the Hyundai A-League is producing the most exciting games and there is long history of national competition prior to that. Western Sydney Wanderers are already a proud part of the modern story and look to add to that, starting with Sunday-s Grand Final.
Football, they say, is a matter of opinion and this book encapsulates some of the arguments the two authors have had about the game and its place in Australian society and history since it began way back in the nineteenth century.
If you want to understand football in Australia this is the book with which you should start. It is the most comprehensive and detailed history of the development of football in Australia, illustrated with over 400 images.
Roy Hay and Bill Murray are respected academics, football historians and well known throughout football in Australia.
Image credit: Anita Milas & Roy Walshe
