Herald Sun Review of Players

‘Many Faces of Footy’
by Claire Sutherland
Herald Sun, Saturday April 23, 2004.

It sounds frankly dreadful on paper: a novel whose entire plot revolves around a TV footy show.

But don’t be too quick to judge. Tony Wilson’s satirical novel is whip smart, taking the familiar and giving it a hyper-real twist for deeply cynical effect.

Ian ‘Tickets’ Thompson is a controversial former footy hard man turned Botoxed commentator and all-round buffoon.

During filming of his regular street vox-pop segment Tickets and Dickheads on the popular Leather and Lace weekly footy show, he is moved to headbutt a homeless man who insults him.

When footage of the incident leaks to a rival and failing TV footy show, a damage-control operation of epic proportions swings into force.

Leather and Lace host Stan Yeomans (a battler from Maribyrnong turned footy club president and footy journo) joins forces with rough nut millionaire and TV network owner Sir Barry Haynes to concoct a story …(spoiler edited out here)

Former player and rival TV host Billy Nock smells a rat, and with his Keno hostess wife undertakes an unlikely campaign of espionage to expose the unscrupulous trio.

Players is an incisive and deeply funny book that occasionally lapses into high farce but is smart enough to pull itself back from the edge every time with its crisp writing and liberal sprinkling of neat one liners.

Its characters are well fleshed out (some Melbourne media figures might be of the view they are too well fleshed out) and frighteningly believable.

This is a rollicking and fast-paced read that stands alone in terms of originality and wit.

Even, or perhaps especially, football ignoramuses will find Players an illuminating if exaggerated insight into a hidden world.