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When Matildas star Sam Kerr was just a kid, when the inaugural A-League Women's season was still years away, and when a World Cup on Australian soil was a fanciful idea, a mob of mature Melbourne women threw caution, asthma inhalers and orthopaedic inserts to the wind and formed a team to play in the lowest division of the metropolitan league.
Were the Mighty 'Bras, as this Brunswick Zebras team became known, the unheralded catalyst for the change of fortunes in women's football? No-one can say for sure. What's certain, however, is that this motley team of footballing novices became (their results notwithstanding) a roaring and enduring success.
As their coach, author Paul Connolly, documents in this hilarious and heartwarming memoir, the Mighty 'Bras fell in love with a game; a love more intense for its late blossoming and the knowledge that injury, pregnancy, or perhaps even osteoporosis, could end it in a second. More importantly, these footballing novices discovered that their seemingly whimsical adventure turned out to be so much more, and forged lasting friendships and a sense of community that made all the bumps, bruises and calamitous losses worthwhile.
About the author
Paul Connolly is an award-winning journalist and author whose work has appeared in the Monthly, Guardian Australia, the Age, and the Sydney Morning Herald. The author of the weekly flash fiction column 'Kitchen Sink Drama' in Good Weekend magazine, he has written and edited a number of books. These include Kitchen Sink Drama, Father Figures, Sucking the Marrow Out of Life, and The World's Weirdest Sports. He lives in Brunswick, Melbourne, with his partner and their two daughters. He played football throughout his youth and the older he gets, the better he was.
