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The Yawning Giant

A Sliding Doors Football Tale
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Dave Allenson, a gruff security guard, is no fan of football, but he takes his job seriously. When, in the 1997 play-off against Iran, Peter Hore tries to tear down the net of the Iranian goal, Dave tackles him and prevents the vandalism – setting off a series of events in an alternate timeline of Australian football. In this alternative universe 'sliding-doors' narration, we follow a pivoted history where the results of the infamous game between Australia and Iran had gone differently. One tiny moment can change everything. Through the eyes of various players, associates, and others over the course of twenty years, this book traces the course of “what if”. What would Australian football and the National Soccer League have looked like if things were different? It’s just one version of how, if that moment had gone differently, things would be today.
Mark Bowman has spent most of his Trade life juggling a passion for football with a career as a medical specialist in the treatment of infertility, in particular IVF. After watching the Socceroos qualify for their first World Cup in 1973 on TV with his father, he spent the next 32 years in torment watching repeated qualification failure every four years, usually from the terraces. In between those big-ticket games, there was little to cheer for internationally and domestically, because while he attended many National Soccer League matches, Mark had no true club to support apart from during the brief existence of Northern Spirit FC. Despite Australian football’s successes since 2005 on the world stage and at long last, a club team to support in Sydney FC, Mark has long dreamt about alternative outcomes for the game he loves and has often wondered what might have been, under different circumstances. His late night musings, lateral thinking, love of both anecdotes and football culture more generally, finally came together in The Yawning Giant, which he is quite certain will be his only one and only novel.
* It's not every day that one of Australia's leading IVF specialists writes a fiction book about football! But this is his passion, shared with his dad, brothers and daughter. * Not only a 'sliding doors tale'. but also a manifesto of how the author things the game could be. * Based on real events starting in November 1997. Publicity: * Media release, Launch at Gleebooks, Football Writers' Festival.
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