The long awaited football tragic’s Heartfelt Moments in Australian Rules Football edited by Ross Fitzgerald and featuring 37 authors has been launched in Melbourne.

It was launched in the heart of Blues territory at Carlton’s Il Gambero on the Park.

One of the authors is Cardinal George Pell. His Eminence, it should be remembered, signed to play for Richmond in his final year of school in 1959. As Pell writes in the book: “I was promised a place on their training list and financial help to attend Melbourne University.

Alas, seminary life made a VFL career impossible, but the cardinal still took to the field in the annual showdown between theology and philosophy students which, as he tells, offered a most erudite standard of sledging.

Pell remains an avid follower of AFL. Indeed, readers may recall the time he took away from matters ecclesiastical to provide footy tips each week for those superior stirrers Imre Salusinszky and Tim Blair and their sadly short-lived ABC Radio National show.

Ross Fitzgerald (ed) Heartfelt Moments in Australian Rules Football

Ross Fitzgerald launches Heartfelt Moments in Australian Rules Football in Melbourne.

Paperback, 244 pages
$29.95, ISBN: 9781925138948
Connor Court, Release date: 1 March 2016.

This collection of 37 original essays includes writings by and about football players, supporters and administrators who are vastly different in religion, class, income, ethnicity, gender, race and sexual preference.

Contributors to Heartfelt Moments in Australian Rules Football range from devout atheists like myself, Dick Whitaker and Barry Dickins to believing Christians such as Geraldine Doogue, John Birt and Cardinal George Pell.

For more information click here.

Western Bulldogs vice-president Susan Alberti speaks at the national launch of Heartfelt Moments in Australian Rules Football in Melbourne.
 
More shots from the launch. Click on a photo to enlarge it.

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