I had the idea for Players on Elgin Street, Carlton, in 1999. For four years, my father begged me to write it: ‘The Footy Show will get cancelled and you’ll kick yourself!’, he’d plead. I explained that The Footy Show would never get cancelled, that it was like asbestos and that they would have to get specialists from outside the TV industry in to remove it. Nevertheless, I took his point and wrote the novel.

The book was launcched at Glenferrie Oval clubrooms by John Kennedy

Tickets began to have qualms even in the instant that passed between the headbutt starting and the headbutt landing…

Ian ‘Tickets’ Thompson, former football star and current playboy, is a media darling. Arrogant, womanising, deeply offensive; he’s the star of TV’s top-rating football show ‘Leather and Lace’. Billy Nock is still playing football, even though his best days are well and truly behind him. Married to the beautiful and talented Olivia – lotto host extraordinaire – and committed to his team, his friends and his family, Billy’s the genuine article. Unfortunately, on the ground he’s a has-been, and on TV he’s a never-was. His football show, Pill Talk is unfunny, unoriginal and unwatched.

But fame is fickle, and sooner or later, the good guys are due for a win. Tickets has gone beyond the pale in one of his regular tussles with the public. And Billy has the footage. With big reputations and even bigger money on the line, this is much more than a game. This is celebrity, and these people will resort to anything – lies, betrayal, double-crosses and maybe even murder – to stay on top.

One week … in one store.