Fitzy at his passionate best with chest-puffing tales of great sportsmanship and fair play.
Sport was never meant to be complicated. No gibberish, no statistics, no talk of green-zones, black-zones, channels and percentage plays, no cheating, no grubbiness and certainly no ball-tampering.
Peter FitzSimons celebrates the good, the generous and the kind in Australian sport, the genuine characters, the national treasures and the special moments when the losers were the true champions and the game, whichever game, was done proud.
Hilarious and heart-warming, this is Fitzy at his passionate best. He reminds us that there really are good men and women in sport, that fair play still exists and that anyone can be a winner.
Peter FitzSimons is one of Australia’s most prominent and successful media and publishing identities. His busy professional life involves co-hosting the breakfast program on Sydney's Radio 2UE, writing weekly columns for the Sydney Morning Herald and Sun Herald newspapers, appearing on Foxtel's Back Page television show and, when time permits, authoring best-selling books. A correspondent for London's Daily Telegraph as well, he is also in high demand as a guest speaker and presenter
The book has a few redeeming features. It was written for sports fans (hence no big words or sentences) and it didn't take long to read.
There were too many downsides however, for me to regard this as a book to recommend to any sports lover.
A lot of the anecdotes in the book for a southern reader appeared to be based around League and Union for which I have no interest, many of them from sports that I love such as cricket and Aussie Rules I had already heard, and had been told better previously. Overall I didn't feel that FitzSimons had any deep or abiding connection to the anecdotes he was retelling and as a collection of stories if felt a little contrived and forced.
This was fantastic & I expect nothing less of Peter Fitzsimmons. Before the cricket ball tampering scandal & tennis brats we had some incredible athletes to be proud of, so many magic moments, so many funny anecdotes. As an enthusiastic Cowboys fan I loved reading about the 1989 game that he thought topped the 2015 grand final. And I loved sharing the humorous stories with my Dad and watching him laugh. This renews my faith & patriotism in Australian sport.
Always been a fan of Peter Fitzsimons and there are some terrific anecdotes throughout, but let down by its editing : OK to mention in your column that something was 'last Wednesday' but doesn't age well when the event was 10 months ago. Also comes across as a poor attempt to cash in on the Xmas market.