Players
Tickets began to have qualms even in the instant that passed between the headbutt starting and the headbutt landing…
Ian ‘Tickets’ Thompson, former football star and current playboy, is a media darling. Arrogant, womanising, deeply offensive; he’s the star of TV’s top-rating football show ‘Leather and Lace’. Billy Nock is still playing football, even though his best days are well and truly behind him. Married to the beautiful and talented Olivia – lotto host extraordinaire – and committed to his team, his friends and his family, Billy’s the genuine article. Unfortunately, on the ground he’s a has-been, and on TV he’s a never-was. His football show, ‘Pill Talk’ is unfunny, unoriginal and unwatched.
But fame is fickle, and sooner or later, the good guys are due for a win. Tickets has gone beyond the pale in one of his regular tussles with the public. And Billy has the footage. With big reputations and even bigger money on the line, this is much more than a game. This is celebrity, and these people will resort to anything – lies, betrayal, double-crosses and maybe even murder – to stay on top.
Players launched by John Kennedy Sr
After a lifetime of hearing stories of John Kennedy’s legendary oratory, he was the perfect launcher for my novel. It was great to hear that booming voice ringing out in the Glenferrie Oval changerooms again, and there were hundreds there to experience it.
A photo as proof
This photo was taken as proof that on one day in April, 2005, in one bookstore in Melbourne, Australia (Readers Feast), my book was top of the bestsellers, just edging out Douglas Adams and Dan Brown.
SMH’s Best Young Australian Novelist, 2006
It was pretty thrilling to win a ‘young novellist’ award, about 2 months before age and advancing hairline would make me ineligible. I shared the honour with three others, including Marcus Zusak whose entry was The Book Thief. That novel went on to sell 16 million copies worldwide. Players, well it sold less than that.
Reviews for Players
“One of the finest satirical novels ever written in this country.”
– Wendy Harmer, The Hoopla
“Very funny. We're lucky it's just fiction and people in TV aren't really like this.”
– Dave Hughes
“Wilson lines them up from point blank range and fires - at television celebrity and those who cloak themselves in it. It's very funny.”
– Tim Lane
“Tony Wilson's cracker of a novel is without doubt the most accurate study of the sports ego ever embarked upon. The result is a frightening collision of stupidity and success. I couldn't put it down.”
– Rampaging Roy Slaven
“Players is a dependably written romp through some of the most sacred institutions of modern Australia. TV and the media, fame and fortune, sport and teamwork – they’re all put under Wilson’s satire microscope, and none emerges from the examination with much credit. Sport and politics shouldn’t be mixed, some say. Wilson’s characters and plot show that everything is about politics, and professional football is just another commodity in the shrinking Australian media landscape. Some play the game, but only a few are players.”
– David Cohen, Courier Mail, 16/5/05
“This book’s greatest asset – other than its laugh out loud jokes – is that it is almost plausible ... A highly recommended antidote to the footballing banalities of the months ahead.”
– Fred Pawle, Limelight Magazine, May 2005
“Television, football and our obsessions with them make for overripe material, and when Wilson lines up the obvious objects of satire, he doesn't miss. Of course, that's not too hard. When stupidity is not just rewarded on the field but celebrated off it - as it is in Australia and to a staggering extreme in Melbourne, where Players is set - any half-talented writer could merely repeat some of the best-known tales and get a laugh. What is harder is putting new but believable flesh to the bones of the predictable parodies and jokes. That Wilson doesn't miss here is the basis of his real success. That is why despite what the PR bumf insists, he's not Australia's answer to Ben Elton; he's better than that.”
– Bernard Zuel, The Sydney Morning Herald, 2/4/05
“What is surprising is Wilson's mature mastery of his plot. As a first-time novelist, he would have been forgiven for dangling some loose ends and implausibilities. But Players is nearly perfect in the way it covers all the angles. It has the potential to be read widely and with great social effect. As a fantasy of hypocrisy and corruption it is reminiscent of Frank Hardy's Power Without Glory, the most recent Australian novel to have had a major political impact.”
– Ian Syson, The Age, 9/4/05
“This is a rollicking and fast-paced read that stands alone in terms of originality and wit. Even, or perhaps especially, football ignoramuses will find Players an illuminating if exaggerated insight into a hidden world.”
– Claire Sutherland, Herald-Sun, 23/4/04