Neil Balme Audiobook By Anson Cameron, Neil Balme cover art

Neil Balme

A Tale of Two Men

Preview

Audible Standard 30-day free trial

Try Standard free
Select 1 audiobook a month from our entire collection of titles.
Yours as long as you’re a member.
Get unlimited access to bingeable podcasts.
Standard auto renews for $8.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Neil Balme

By: Anson Cameron, Neil Balme
Narrated by: Nick O'Rourke
Try Standard free

$8.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $21.85

Buy for $21.85

'You've got to have that madness in your mind to win, win, win. You've got to have that somewhere, but it can't consume you.'

This story begins in infamy. Everyone's first glimpse of the man is of ferocious blows struck in Grand Finals, his name splashed in headlines across the back pages of the tabloids. It's the 1970s, it's Richmond: kill or be killed.

There was a time when almost every football watcher who heard Neil Balme's name would react with disapproval. My God, what a bruiser . . . A dangerous fellow . . . And those who knew him would quickly deny these accusations. He's not a brute, you know, he's a thinker . . . A mild-mannered bloke, easygoing. The great paradox of Balme is the violence and the pacifism, the mayhem and the calm, the rough justice and the gentleness. He's a cold-blooded thug; he's a soft-hearted healer; he's a villain and a hero.

Balme is unique in having spent longer than anyone else in clubland. Richmond, Norwood, Melbourne, Collingwood, Geelong and Richmond again - over fifty years. He's seen and created limitless change in those decades. So how did Neil Balme go from being the infamous on-field enforcer of the 1970s to the avuncular guru the football world knows and loves today?

After eleven premierships, an aura surrounds the man. Get Balme to your club and premierships will follow. What has he to tell us of football, of the high times and the low, of the champs and the egos? Of Royce and GR, of Diamond Joe, of Eddie and Mick, of Bomber, of Dimma? And of life and the human heart?

Balme's tale is, unsurprisingly, a mix of hard truth and unerring compassion.©2022 Anson Cameron and Neil Balme (P)2022 Penguin Random House Australia
Biographies & Memoirs Sports Soccer Heartfelt

Listeners also enjoyed...

Did I Ever Tell You This? Audiobook By Sam Neill cover art
Did I Ever Tell You This? By: Sam Neill
Bulldozed Audiobook By Niki Savva cover art
Bulldozed By: Niki Savva
No reviews yet