Mark Bowman has spent most of his Trade life juggling a passion for football with a career as a medical specialist in the treatment of infertility, in particular IVF. After watching the Socceroos qualify for their first World Cup in 1973 on TV with his father, he spent the next 32 years in torment watching repeated qualification failure every four years, usually from the terraces. In between those big-ticket games, there was little to cheer for internationally and domestically, because while he attended many National Soccer League matches, Mark had no true club to support apart from during the brief existence of Northern Spirit FC.

Despite Australian football’s successes since 2005 on the world stage and at long last, a club team to support in Sydney FC, Mark has long dreamt about alternative outcomes for the game he loves and has often wondered what might have been, under different circumstances. His late night musings, lateral thinking, love of both anecdotes and football culture more generally, finally came together in The Yawning Giant, which he is quite certain will be his only one and only novel.