Australian Rules Football fanatic and Melbourne academic Lionel Frost has written this fascinating history of the sport through the careers of some of the greats. He shows how AFL (Australian Football League) has developed from an amateur, local sport to the professional, national industry that it is today. It explores the ways in which the lives and careers of players, coaches and administrators were shaped by the times in which they lived, and how their responses to challenges and opportunities in turn shaped the development of the game. In a broader sense, it is a series of stories about Australians, and about life in Australia, that all Australians will be able to relate to. Based on new research, and covering all states in which Australian Rules is the major code, the book features the careers of people such as Norm and Len Smith, John Kennedy, Jack Oatey, through to modern ?gures such as Tim Watson and Jason Akermanis. All of the living subjects, and in many cases the families of those who are deceased, have co-operated fully in the research and provided unpublished source material such as letters and notebooks. Foreword by Ron Barassi.