Lying on grass

Featured in

  • Published 20230801
  • ISBN: 978-1-922212-86-3
  • Extent: 196pp
  • Paperback (234 x 153mm), eBook

JAMIE RUSCOE ISN’T the most popular boy at school, but he has enough hand-eye co-ordination to be part of things. If there’s a game of stingers during recess, he’s handy to have on your team. Footy, cricket, soccer? Never the first picked, but a useful extra body. He can run, though he isn’t the quickest; he can throw, though not the hardest; and he can kick, though not the farthest. Catching is easy for him, and that’s his best asset. Most of all, he can read a situation. Jamie knows he’s too quiet to be well liked, and not quite good enough to be admired. Because of this, he makes an effort to speak when he’d prefer to say nothing – and any time a game breaks out, he plays as hard as he can. 

It’s a surprise then when Todd Mitchell invites him to hang out after the last day of school in 1982. Todd’s the halfback of the under-twelve footy team, and wicketkeeper/batsman of the under-twelve cricket team. Although not mates, they’re friendly enough, mainly because they live on the same street and, occasionally, walk home together. 

Already a subscriber? Sign in here

If you are an educator or student wishing to access content for study purposes please contact us at griffithreview@griffith.edu.au

Share article

More from author

The signal line

FictionGEO AND WES didn’t talk on the fifteen-minute drive from the airport, although that in itself wasn’t unusual. When they arrived at Royal Hobart,...

More from this edition

Oh, the shame of it

Non-fictionModern leisure emerged in the West in the early 1700s when French and English cities developed new forms of society built around urban amenities – parks, cafés, fairs and shopping districts – servicing an expanding class of people with discretionary time and income. Public museums as storehouses of national culture appeared a little later in the nineteenth century where they contributed to the development of so-called ‘rational recreation’, a species of serious leisure intended to ‘civilise the masses’.

Upping the ante

Non-fictionAs it turned out, Centrebet’s move online – coupled with the many other betting innovations it pioneered – led exactly to where Daffy hoped it would: a prodigious pot of gold. He says the company went from taking ‘fifty or sixty bets in one day’ to taking ‘five or 600,000 bets on a Saturday night from all over the world’. By the turn of the millennium, its annual turnover was in excess of $100 million and it had become – in the words of Piers Morgan, its then general manager – ‘one of the leading sports betting organisations in Australia, if not the world’.

Open water 

FictionBrenda clasped her whistle as she waited. She had a special let camp begin call that only got used once a year. The newbies would learn quickly what Coach’s unique calls meant. Brenda contemplated if she would join in this year’s campfire singalong. With her whistle, she had been practising a rendition of ‘Eternal Flame’ by the Bangles. She knew the girls went wild for their coach’s dorky antics.

Stay up to date with the latest, news, articles and special offers from Griffith Review.