Passion Play
   love, hope and heartbreak at the Footy


   Matthew Klugman

   ISBN 9780980517965
   Paperback, 160 pages
   RRP: $29.95
   Available September 2009

  Order now (links to another site)

  There’s something about Australian Rules football that drives people towards madness.

   Something that produces great pain and joy and an insatiable hunger for more.

Passion Play journeys into the world of footy mania and the love and suffering at its heart. Drawing on the experiences of a diverse set of fans who’ve told their stories in interviews, books, articles, and on footy websites and blogs it follows the annual quest for the premiership in all its horror and glory.

Matthew Klugman brings footy’s seasonal rhythm of love, hope, and heartbreak to life. The hope and nerves of the pre-season, the stress of matches, the sweetness of victory and the dull ache of defeat.Then come the finals with their agonising tension and tragic losses. The ecstasy of the premiership promises to make all the pain and suffering worthwhile but there can be a danger, too, in getting your heart’s desire.

Tales of ordinary football madness sit alongside insights from the worlds of religion and psychology. Love and hate, hope and anxiety, ecstasy and agony and those moments of unbearable tension where it seems, for an instant, that nothing else matters.


Matthew Klugman is the author of the book Blood Matters and has written about sport, music, and medicine for Eureka Street and Meanjin. His work on the passions of footy fans has featured on Australian radio, television, and newspapers. He lives in Melbourne where he lectures in sports studies at Victoria University and is a fellow of the Centre for Ageing, Rehabilitation, Exercise and Sports Science.