Australian Football’s 100 Year Club: Celebrating Three Great Teams (Andrew Clarke, Gelding Street Press)

Hawthorn’s Hawks. Footscray’s Bulldogs. North Melbourne’s Kangaroos. Australian Football’s 100 Year Club: Celebrating Three Great Teams celebrates the centenary of these three iconic Aussie Rules clubs in 2025. From the teams’ early days playing in paddocks, where ‘livestock and trees were a part of the obstacles’, to their place competing in today’s corporatised national Australian Football League, the stories in this book capture the evolution of Australia’s home-grown, high-flying sporting tradition and the communities that helped shape it. Written by veteran sportswriter Andrew Clarke, this book will satisfy stat-heads and storytellers alike. Even with a narrow three-club focus, tracking 100 seasons of footy is a remarkable feat of long-form journalism. Clarke deftly blends on- and off-field stories with a level of detail and accuracy that would settle any pub debate. Memories of great events and greater personalities are committed to the page with genuine awe and respectful professionalism. Through a sporting lens, readers can observe three working-class regions growing and evolving through history. For example, the Great Depression took seven star players from North Melbourne, who were forced to find work elsewhere. The club also bottomed out in 1940, when 15 players enlisted for the war effort. Footscray, meanwhile, transformed from ‘a small village split from Melbourne by a swamp’ into a ‘vibrant and multicultural society’ with a supportive Vietnamese migrant community. Australian Football’s 100 Year Club is more than a collection of scorecards and player lists; it’s a heartfelt retrospective on people, places, and the enduring spirit of footy.

Books+Publishing reviewer: Adam Novaldy Anderson is an Australian-Indonesian writer and commissioning editor at Sweatshop Literacy Movement. Books+Publishing is Australia’s number-one source of pre-publication book reviews.

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