The Coping Stone

The First English Soccer Tour of Australia 1925

Paul Nicholls

$52.95 $45.28

Paperback

Not in-store but you can order this
How long will it take?

Availability Information

We source books from suppliers in Australia and overseas. For books we don't currently have in stock, the time it takes to get them from our suppliers can vary widely - from a few days to a few months - so we check each book with each supplier to determine the expected time it will take to be supplied to us.

We then advise you accordingly. If the time taken to get any book is too long for you, you can let us know and we will cancel or adjust your order, and refund as required.

To find out the anticipated arrival time for specific items prior to ordering, please contact us by phone or email:

Phone +61 2 9264 3111, or 1800 4 BOOKS (1800 4 26657) if outside Sydney:
option 1 Abbey's Bookshop (Crime, History, Science, Kids & more) • info@abbeys.com.au
option 2 Language Book Centre (ESL & Foreign Languages) • language@abbeys.com.au
option 3 Galaxy Bookshop (Sci-fi, Fantasy, Romance, Graphic Novels) • sf@galaxybooks.com.au

QTY:

English

Fair Play Publishing
26 June 2025

Ball games

In a sporting landscape dominated by rugby and Australian Rules, football was kept alive in the mining towns of New South Wales and Queensland, fuelled by the passion of working-class migrants. Through the intertwined lives of miner-turned-international 'Judy' Masters, young Australian administrator Syd Storey, a traditional English administrator John Lewis, and visiting Arsenal player Tom Whittaker, Paul Nicholls brings to life a time when the world's most popular sport struggled for legitimacy in a country where it was seen as a foreign game. From the trenches of the Western Front to the coalfields of the Illawarra and the packed grounds of Sydney, this is a story of resilience, ambition, and the long journey to secure the ""coping stone"" - a historic tour by an English team that promised to cement football's place in the Australian sporting landscape. Set against the backdrop of the roaring twenties, and featuring a gun-toting hotel manager, a breakaway professional league and a mysterious robbery, The Coping Stone is an extraordinary tale of the first English soccer tour of Australia.

By: Paul Nicholls
Imprint: Fair Play Publishing
Country of Publication: Australia
Dimensions: Height: 216mm, Width: 216mm, Spine: 13mm
Weight: 435g
ISBN: 9781923236073
ISBN 10: 1923236075
Pages: 238
Publication Date: 26 June 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Paul Nicholls is a writer from Sydney with a passion for the history and culture of sport.His articles on Australian football history appear in Play On magazine, Shoot Farken, Neos Osmos and The Roar. He has made several appearances on If You Know Your History on Football Nation Radio. Paul also writes fiction and his work has been published as part of the collection The Moving Pen 2021 and 2022.

Reviews for The Coping Stone: The First English Soccer Tour of Australia 1925

Football in Australia has its data, statistics and narratives. However, The Coping Stone is a new phenomenon: a book that mythologises the game in Australia, embeds it in the hearts and minds of Australians and reveals a moment in which the game was culturally central. The great Frank Hardy once joked, ""Of course my story is true; I made it up myself!"" Paul Nicholls might say something along those lines. Rather than simply listing sequences of facts and secondary analyses, his method also involves using imagination to get inside the minds of the players, administrators, and spectators to intimate feelings and emotions beyond the simple statistics. We know, as we read, that these aspects are invented, but we also know they are true. Working outside institutional structure and support and leaning into his passion for creative writing, Nicholls has hit upon the genre that football in Australia needs: mythological narrative. While all around us, other sports have created legends aplenty, we have stuck to bare bones narratives and maybe wondered why these stories get little purchase. We have our great tales, individuals and events from the past. Let's take several leaves out of Paul Nicholls' The Coping Stone and emulate his brilliant work and place football at the heart of Australian culture. Dr Ian Syson Melbourne, Australia