The Game Of Their Lives
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.
“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.
M.C. David Rush