Leaked extract of Milk reveals stuff in book
A sports update about the progress of self-publication of The Milk, the book.
The People!
Good day to you, wherever you are, hopefully free of locked-down livin’. A pox on the pox, as they say or never did, it matters not.
Right! Just a sports update on the progress of Project X The Milk: Forty years of the Canberra Raiders in 20 games, and it’s this:
It’s going quite well.
The Kickstarter project has 86 backers who’ve secured sixty-four per cent of the $10k required for printing, posting, publicising, marketing and overall self-publishing of 1500 hard copies of The Milk.
And if you would kick-start our hearts, do you see what we did there, you would be our new favourites.
The project has nine (9) days to go and if we don’t reach the target it becomes nothing. Your credit card is only charged if we reach the number.
Need approx $3.6k in a week and a bit.
We get that and you’ve backed us, there’s a book with your name in the back on the way.
The book? Kicking goals.
Have had fine yarns with Peter McGrath (first fullback), John McIntyre (long-time CEO, son of the founder), Phil Lynch (Capital-7 journo), Greg Hartley (ref and radio man called “Hollywood”), Brett Dickson (long-time gear steward) and my old mate Paul “Harry” House who was a gun Raiders junior and knows much of the lore of the land either side of the time white fellows arrived in Ngambri country.
Have knocked up five (5) good solid chapters, from early doors of Harry’s ancestors up to 1991, and found out a heap of interesting things, notably a Monaro versus France game at Manuka Oval in 1955 described by The Canberra Times as “the wildest international football fixture ever seen at Manuka Oval”.
“Multiple fights broke out in in the opening minutes continued throughout the match and kept the crowd of about 5000 spectators shimmering with excitement,” declared The Canberra Times.
“They reached their height in the final 15 minutes when players started a fight after [French captain Jean] Dop was slow in playing the ball when tackled on his own line.
“Spectators leapt the fence and joined in the brawl which had spread to half the players on the field. Police called reinforcements from all parts of the ground which caused a break in play of about five minutes. During the scuffle, one French player pulled the lens from the camera of a press photographer.”
Twenty-two years later Monaro took on Great Britain at Seiffert Oval and Larry Corowa had a hat-trick before half-time. He scored two further tries in the second half, both long-range, high speed efforts that delighted the record crowd of 11,500.
The 33-17 thumping was Monaro’s eight-straight win.
“They were hopeless, the Poms,” said Peter McGrath.
Yet the Lions’ performance could perhaps be put in context: the day before they’d gone down 13-12 to Australia at the Sydney Cricket Ground in a game known as the Rugby League World Cup final.
Book’s full of this stuff.
And you could get yourself a copy as if “off the plan” and support the project in its aim to self-publish and so stick it up the man, in this case Big Publishing and the National Rugby League.
Ha. Aren’t I tough.
Pledge here and be my new favourite. And if you already have, do please Forward this email to as many of your compadres who’d like a read.
Again - your card won’t be charged unless we reach the $10k.
If we do, you beauty, and there’ll be a signed copy, with your name in the back as a backer, coming your way.
Good on you.
Go well.
Go the Raiders.