I have a new paperback. Released on March 7, 2026, Grade Five: When Footy Became Everything brings you friendship, school and sport through the eyes of an AFL-footy mad 10-year-old kid.
Originally released as an e-book in 2022, Grade Five: When Footy Became Everything became a category bestseller on Amazon and is now in print for the first time through Eve Street Press.
Taking the form of a school journal written by a Grade Five named Zac, the book details the trials and tribulations of an Under 12s Australian rules footy season.
The twist: Zac is obsessed with footy, but isn’t very good at it. This is no AFL star origin story — it’s sport as experienced by the majority of kids who play it.
It’s aimed at middle-grade readers and their parents. The humour is often over the top yet the experiences and emotions of junior footy are frequently authentic. You’re inside Zac’s head, experiencing the emotional highs and lows as he struggles to get a game.
If you’re raising a footy-mad kid, or you can remember being one, this is a book for you. Set in 1991, Grade Five: When Footy Became Everything gives young readers a taste of AFL footy when it was expanding as a national competition but still played largely at suburban grounds.
A backdrop of events — from the Adelaide Crows entering the competition to Tony Lockett storming to 100 goals — will be nostalgic for older readers and serves as history for younger ones.
Why did I write this?
I’ve long realised that I have an almost perfectly distilled memory of the 1991 AFL season. It was the first — and perhaps, the only — year in which I followed every game, read every news report and soaked up every statistic (at least, it sure felt that way). It was also my first year playing competitive footy on a Saturday morning.
So much was happening and it stands out in my memory as the year when footy really was everything. Like Zac, the narrator of this journal, I was 10 years old and I lapped up as much of it as I could.
Like Zac, I also faced challenges. The biggest was the realisation that I was not all that good at footy. You can imagine, or perhaps even know yourself, how shattering that can be.
But the good news is that Zac is a determined kid with a lot of good qualities. This helps him win out in the end (though rarely on the scoreboard).
Zac’s not a footy star, but he’s the star of this story. His glory is in finding fun and enjoyment in footy. A lot of that comes through friendship. To me, that’s an underrated element in a lot of children’s sports books.
Check it out here.