Tento autor se proslavil svým dlouholetým působením ve fotbalovém klubu a následně se etabloval jako spisovatel. Jeho psaní čerpá z hlubokého porozumění sportovnímu prostředí a přináší jedinečný pohled na témata týmové práce, vedení a osobní vytrvalosti. Jeho práce se vyznačují silným vypravěčským stylem a poutavým jazykem, který oslovuje čtenáře i mimo okruh sportovních fanoušků.
The story follows a quirky boy named Bob, who, despite his scruffy appearance and unusual habit of sniffing footballs, is passionate about the game. His determination to become a football great, inspired by his hero Matthew Richardson from the Tigers, drives him to pursue his dreams against the odds. Bob's journey explores themes of ambition, identity, and the love of sport.
"The Footscray winters and the glorious liniment-scented afternoons. All of the laughs, the scraps, the yarns and the characters: they all left a mark on me. And I wouldn’t change any of it." Bob Murphy has never been a typical footballer. Music buff, Age columnist and Winnebago driver, he is as comfortable in a Fitzroy café or the front bar of a grungy pub as he is in the locker room. In this unique memoir, Murphy takes the reader inside his seventeen-year career, including his three years as captain of the Western Bulldogs, exploring the people, places and events that shaped him. From playing backyard cricket in 1980s Warragul to Community Cup with Paul Kelly in the 2000s, and from the joy of marrying his high school crush to the agony of a season-ending ACL rupture: the man described as the spirit of the Bulldogs has soul, and it’s made of leather. How did the country kid with a gypsy’s heart become an All-Australian captain? What’s it like to have your club reach the AFL Grand Final for the first time in sixty-two years, and have to cheer from the sidelines? How does it feel to realise you can no longer do the things that made you great? The great Australian football bard Martin Flanagan has long insisted Bob Murphy has a book in him like no footballer has written. Leather Soul proves him right.
The Universe and Me is his most ambitious work to date. A tour de force, this book represents a synthesis of at least a dozen separate scientific disciplines, including cosmology, physics, chemistry, microbiology, paleobiology, paleoclimatology, paleontology, botany, optics, mammology, primatology, anthropology and the history of science. All of these skillfully and woven together into a fabric of great charm. This is, literally, the greatest story ever told. It is our story. The story of creation, and in the hands of this story-teller, this great adventure, has never been more understandable and available to all.