All supporters and families should attend this event, with a great opportunity to hear guest speaker Paul Daffey speak on the recent publication of Footy Town. Paul will also recall the great rivalry between St. Bernards and North Old Boys during the 1970’s & 80’s. Footy Town is a collection of stories from the local footy, stories that we all know and love that have been carefully chosen from over 50 authors around Australia and put together in this wonderful book by Paul Daffey and John Harms. Martin Flanagan of the Age reviewed this book and writes,

“Some years ago, somewhere in the month of September, the ABC had several sublime hours of spring-time radio.

John Harms and Paul Daffey had the microphones and it was grand final day in country footy leagues around Australia. Harms is a great character – the spirit of geniality and a fine sportswriter in his own right, he is passionate about the idea of footy as an expression of community.

Daffey, a more taciturn character, is to grassroots footy what David Attenborough is to the natural world. His knowledge of it is encyclopaedic. And so, when people from all over Australia rang in with grand final results, they
were met by Harms’ infectious pleasure at coordinating a festival of footy and Daffey’s unfailing expertise concerning the various clubs and competitions.

For the past 10 years or so, the pair have sought to defy media history – in which the drift is to the visual and the electronic – by producing The Footy Almanac in which every game of the AFL season is written up by a spectator. As an initiative, The Footy Almanac is bold, quixotic and wonderfully egalitarian, but I think Harms and Daffey have struck an even richer vein with their latest production, Footy Town. Footy Town proceeds on a different assumption – 50 men and women from around Australia have been invited to dig into the rich loam of their memories and source their love of the game. In two words, what this book has that the general footy media doesn’t possess, despite all its glitzy posturing to the contrary, is humour and characters.“

Cost $25 (Parma & pot on entry) – 12 noon onwards till 2.00pm. RSVP Bernie Skahill – info@bernardskahilljewellery.com by Wednesday 29 May.