The Call

Martin Flanagan is an Australian journalist and author. He writes on sport, particularly Australian Rules football. Flanagan has written thirteen books, including the novel The Call (1998), an “historical imagining” into the life of Tom Wills, the enigmatic father of Australian rules football and captain-coach of the first Aboriginal cricket team. Flanagan portrays Wills as a tragic figure caught between white and black Australia, and postulates that the Aboriginal game of Marngrook influenced his conception of Australian Rules football. Flanagan subsequently became embroiled in football’s “history wars” which received significant coverage in the national media in 2008, the year of the game’s 150th anniversary celebrations. He and Bruce Myles adapted The Call into a stage play of the same name, which premiered at Melbourne’s Malthouse Theatre in 2004. Flanagan has also written biographies of Australian Rules footballers: Richo (2010) on Matthew Richardson and The Short Long Book (2015) on Michael Long, and The Tom Wills Picture Show (ETT Imprint, 2018).