Major project: THE LOVE OF THE GAME

Image description: a grassy sports field with a crowd in the stands.

THE LOVE OF THE GAME

is a dual-perspective literary romance about an in-the-closet, champion AFL player and the boy he’s loved since he was fourteen. It’s the gritty reality of Heated Rivalry, written by an queer feminist with twelve years working and advocating for LGBTQIA+ progress inside the AFL industry.

THEN: Angsty teenage star, NICKY, can’t hack the pressure­­­. Defiant to a fault and oppressed by homophobia everywhere he turns, he dreams of escaping footy-mad Melbourne to live freely as a gay man overseas. But the forbidden love he feels for his best friend keeps him holding on.

NOW: A decade later, Cads is the AFL’s biggest star with his contract up for renewal. Missing his newly-long-distance fiancé, Grace, and yearning for his past love, Nicky, Cads begins an affair with a twink bartender which could destroy the golden life he’s sacrificed everything for. 

Haunted by the consequences of his choices, Cads must choose between THE LOVE OF THE GAME and love itself.

For fans of Douglas Stuart’s Young Mungo, Holden Sheppard’s Invisible Boys and Yeah the Boys, Madeleine Miller’s The Song of Achilles, Josh Silver’s Fruit Fly, and Jacob Tierney’s adaptation of Heated Rivalry (if you are interested in the heaviness of homophobia in sport. Whilst FULL of love, this is not a nice book for the sweet, faint of heart).