A Year in the Life and Death of the Melbourne Rebels

In November 2023, the Melbourne Rebels began a pre-season full of hope and optimism. With a deep roster and a strong, unifying 'Ubuntu' culture embedding itself within the franchise, there was high anticipation that the 2024 season - their 14th - would finally deliver success.

Granted unprecedented insider access, writer Geoff Parkes set out to document the Rebels' season and to provide rugby followers with an insight into what makes a professional rugby franchise work.

What followed was an extraordinary turn of events: the club tipped into voluntary administration early in 2024, now not only fighting to compete in one of global rugby's toughest elite competitions, but against a governing body intent on shutting it down.

A Year in the Life and Death of the Melbourne Rebels is a raw, close-up account of a group of committed people who, despite being forced to operate under severe financial and emotional stress, strove to take their club to its first ever Super Rugby finals appearance.

This book also provides a window into the administration of rugby in Australia; a troubling account of how a newly found determination to impose financial austerity clashed head on with rugby's traditional values of respect, comradeship, and a shared love of the game.

“Brilliant, fly-on-the-wall insight”

Iain Payten – Sydney Morning Herald

“An invaluable tale to add to the canon of sports-writing. Unerring”

Harry Jones – 8/9 Combo Rugby Podcast

Raised in a rugby family in New Zealand's King Country, Geoff Parkes has become a prominent and respected writer on rugby. Now based in Melbourne, Australia, his weekly column 'The Wrap', written for has become a regular Monday morning staple for rugby followers all around the globe. Published in 2017 his book, A World in Conflict: The Global Battle for Rugby Supremacy, provided insights into the commercial and political factors at play in determining rugby's future, arising from the sport becoming professional in 1995. His writing seamlessly blends a deep understanding of how rugby is played on the field with an ability to explain how boardroom battles and off-field machinations impact upon and influence, on-field outcomes. In November 2023, Geoff embedded himself into the Melbourne Rebels franchise and the book that followed, A Year in the Life and Death of the Melbourne Rebels, is a first-hand account of everything that occurred over the course of the 2024 season; the high of the Rebels' first-ever Super Rugby finals appearance to the lowest low imaginable; termination of the club. Geoff is also a novelist; his crime fiction book When the Deep Dark Bush Swallows You Whole, will be published by Penguin Random House in February 2025.

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