The GAME THAT WOULD BE KING

THE IRISH POST“Murphy traces a family tree of games long forgotten:trapball, stoolball, the wonderfully named “camping” and “knappan”, withhockey, hurling, baseball, bowling, tennis and golf stepping into view alongthe way … Soccer remains centre stage, but the wider cast gives the book itscolour, strangeness and charm.”

SOCCER BOOKS UK“In an era where soccer dominates global sports culture,Brendan Murphy’s The Game That Would Be King arrives as arevolutionary text that challenges everything we thought we knew about the beautifulgame’s origins. This meticulously researched volume doesn’t just push back thetimeline of soccer’s history-it explodes it.”

IRISH AMERICA“The Game ThatWould Be King sets out to do something audacious: rewrite what we think we knowabout the origins of soccer … Packed with oddities, anecdotes andephemera, The Game That Would Be King is a dense but engaging work- likely the most comprehensive history of early ball games yet assembled.”

Brendan Murphy is the author of From Sheffield with Love, a history of the world’s oldest soccer club. He has published two young adult fantasy books, Beyond the Gloaming and The Traitor’s Trap. He is an adjunct associate professor of psychiatry and has written widely on youth mental health. He was raised in Sheffield, England, and lives in Melbourne with his two children in a mudbrick house built for the composer Dorian Le Gallienne. They share three acres with shy sugar gliders, sturdy spiders, a colony of bats, colorful birdlife, charming kookaburras, and a mob of kangaroos.