Author(s): MANGAN Patrick

New Sports & Recreation

From the moment he could kick a ball, Patrick Mangan was fanatical about soccer. And what he lacked in skill, he made up for in a devotion not shared, sadly, by the residents of the Wimmera. Like Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch set among the gum trees and dust, this is the story of a weedy Pommy kid falling in love with the world game and his epic battle to convert the pagans of the outback to the cause. All with the added stigma of barracking for the hapless English team, Arsenal. Offsider is about how sport defines us, how nationality defines us. And how a boy came to love the occasionally heroic, sometimes tragic, World Cup-bound Socceroos.