The Milk is off to printer, Raider Nation holds breath

Repeat: The Milk, the little book that could, is with the printers. Good, perhaps very good, even exciting times.

The People! Some news:

The Milk, the little book that could because 195 champions backed it via Kickstarter and this crackerjack medium is off to the printers.

Repeat: The Milk is with the printers.

Yes - at 23:47 on Wednesday evening I pressed Send on an email that zapped 100,817 words, 240 pages and a 12 megabyte PDF of the cover (below) across the e-waves detailing 40 years of footy by these our Canberra Raiders.

And six months of labour was done.

And then I did a TikTok.

The cover? Is here:

Yes - got old mate Loz for the Foreword after old mate Stick politely declined, he’s doing his own book down the track and much of the local subject matter is similar. Though our books will not be similar at all given mine, at times, appeared to be writing of its own mind, jagging off tangents like “so many poor man’s Champs-Élysées; spokes in a multi-prong Mercedes Benz symbol”, which is a line on Page 2.

Dunno who old mate hairy-back Viking on the cover is but he’s the right colour and there’s a certain look in his eye, and he came with my $12 monthly subscription to Canva.

Plus I couldn’t use any Raiders player pics because NRL said so, and there’s another story in that that I’ll tell down the track, particularly some fellow’s use of the term “this book is not permitted”, which, red rag to bull n all, couldn’t have made the book happen any better had he written it himself.

Not permitted, indeed.

More on it another time, suffice to say old mate, from the sounds of three (3) emails, is a young lawyer playing tough. Enough of him and his gibber.

For now we’ll roll about in the mud because a mocked-up draft will be arriving tomorrow for final … whatsits. Bit of jiggy-pokery and fixes. And then: boom. Come March 1, here’s hoping, a thousand copies of the bad-boy will turn up in the garage at Club Goondari, Allambie Heights.

And there will go the neighbourhood.

Sunday March 6 is our book launch at Queanbeyan Leagues Club, and you are all all of course invited, should be good fun afternoon on the ink, hopefully having a chat on a stage with a few old boy Raiders players along with a fellah called ‘Raider Nick’ who’s a local legend and MC and radio dude, and been very helpful, and we’ll talk of old war stories, and launch The Milk into the … I dunno. Ether. Public domain. Queanbeyan.

Regardless, be a heap of other things on that week including round one versus Cronulla Sharks on the Friday night, the Black Opal, Canberra Cup, and heap of book shop signings and sitting in the Royal Hotel at Queanbeyan and eating a steak they reckon they’re good.

Right! That’s me for now.

As always, but very much today: Up. The. Milk!

Seeya.