Stand Your Ground: Life and Football
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15
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There is only one Kevin Sheedy, a man who occupies a unique position in Australian sport - plumber, self-described grubby little back-pocket, legendary coach, master strategist, mad professor, raconteur, and world-wide promoter of the game of Australian Rules. Stand Your Ground is his life story, and it's everything you'd expect from the most surprising, most interesting and most innovative man in AFL. Stand Your Ground is a journey from the working-class heart of Melbourne to every corner of Australia and beyond, including those well-known football outposts: Dublin, Kentucky and the Beverly Wilshire in Hollywood, a trip that only Kevin Sheedy could take. From his descriptions of a young boy growing up in the inner suburbs of Melbourne in the 1950s, through to his playing days at Richmond and his ground-breaking 27 years as coach of Essendon, and finally to his commitment to take Australia's own game to the world, Sheeds' book is passionate, erudite, colourful, funny and controversial. It is a work of history, memoir and sporting drama as fascinating and multi-faceted as the man himself.
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I found this not much different than the various autobiographies that are thrown up by sportsmen and women. In truth they do not lead that interesting a life. They are born and go to school and play footy and coach/manage a team and then tell the heartache of having to drop a favoured player etc etc. For this to be interesting there has to be a certain style of writing that at least keeps one interested. Sadly the great Sheeds (and his ghost writer) failed in this regard.
