The Call

by Martin Flanagan

Thomas Wentworth Wills is an Australian Icarus. Having grown up among the Djabwurring people in western Victoria, he was sent to the Rugby school in England. Returning in 1856, he promptly revolutionised colonial cricket and opened the door for the evolution of the indigenous game we know as Australian football. In 1866, he coached the Aboriginal team which later became the first Australian cricket team to tour England, despite having suffered in the war being fought at the country's frontiers between white settlers and the land's Aboriginal inhabitants. Tom Wills died a neglected and forgotten figure. His life is an Australian tragedy, but it bequeathed to the nation a unique and hopeful legacy.
A wonderful novel - tragic story of genius and loss, of a man who, leaping at the sun, fell down in a dazzle of healing light. - Brian Matthews The Footy ground of coexistence; common ground; sacred turf. It is the one piece of Australian earth where equality rules and the game is played fair. It's footy. No-one barracks for the extinguishment of this game. Like a stab pass to a leading full-forward, Flanagan shows us the way to our goal. - Patrick Dodson

Genres: Fiction

134 pages, Paperback

First published December 31, 1998

About the author

Martin Flanagan is the author of twenty books, a play and two movie treatments. He is one of Australia’s most respected sports journalists and wrote for The Age from 1985 to 2017.

Reviews

[Greg James · Rating 3 out of 5]

The amazing story of Thomas Wentworth Wills, gun cricketer, footballer and drinker! He packed a lot into his 38 years, including bowling to W G Grace, leading a group of aboriginal cricketers on a tour of England, and helping to write the rules of Australian rules football. Oh , and he was involved in the massacre of many aboriginals in Queensland, in retaliation for an attack which resulted in his father’s death. To say Tom was a divisive character is a massive understatement!

[Oliver Hodson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not sure what I wanted this book to be, but it wasn't quite what I thought. It wavered between being a biography of Wills and a historical rumination on early colonial victoria, sport, and race relations. I wish it had been a bit more forensic or a little more ruminant, because in the end I felt it lacked focus. I'm not sure if it was because the historical records were thin or Flanagan didn't want to talk on boring stuff, but I wanted to hear more about football, especially the establishment of the rules and games Wills played in.

I thought that the strength of the book was leaving the stories in their time and the tram conductor narrator was only partially bridging the old stories to the current time, and pretty much always in a personal or misty way, rather than politicking way, which made me surprised to read about the controversy over the book in the 'History wars'.

[Loene · Rating 3 out of 5]

Story (a historical novel I guess but where does fact end and fiction begin?) of TW Wills, early brilliant cricket player in Melbourne, and the story of the beginnings of the colony of Victoria and its establishment families. And the creation of football. Also involving the sad story of attitudes and behaviour of colonialists towards Aborigines. Slaughter on the one hand and at the same time recruiting of Aborigines ( the dying race) to play in the first 'native' cricket team to play in England. Compelling and ultimately sad.