Campese

Once hailed as the ‘Bradman of Rugby’, David Campese thrilled spectators both in Australia and overseas with his footloose, crazy-brave style of free running. This book tells the story of his rise from humble beginnings to the very top of a global sport.

As a rugby player, David Campese seemed to operate on pure instinct, one that left many a defender clutching for him in vain, stranded in the slipstream of his audacity. He followed no straight path, observed no convention, and in so doing brought a whole swag of new supporters to the game. Hailed as the ‘Bradman of Rugby’ by former Wallaby coach Alan Jones and the ‘Pele’ of Rugby by others, Campese was a match-winner. True, he could lose the odd game as well, but this was part of his unique allure—Campese took crowds to the edge of their seats... and their patience.

The refrain ‘I saw Campese play’ now speaks to much more than wistful reminiscences about a player widely regarded as the most entertaining ever to play the game of Rugby Union. It has come to represent a state of chronic disbelief that the Wallaby ascendancy of Campese’s era—the style, panache, and winning ways of the Australian team in the 1980s and 1990s—has now been squandered by Rugby’s continuing struggle to adapt to the coming of professionalism.

Campese occupies a unique intersection in the sport’s history—one of its last amateurs, and one of its first professionals. The rigid, robotic game of today appears incapable of accommodating a player of his dash and daring, or of replicating his teams' successes.

Campese is an intelligent and deeply felt meditation on the rugby player’s genius, as well as an erudite analysis of Campese’s complex position in the wider context of Australian sport. The book is an immense success. Unlike Campese’s on-field opponents, Curran, a historian, sociologist and passionate rugby fan, is able to understand this quixotic sportsman.

- Barnaby Smith, Australian Book Review

Curran is not so much interested in Campese’s life, but with the aesthetics of his play, analysing it as you might a poem or mythology. The result—astute, imaginative and very accessible—is the kind of superior sports writing that comes along rarely. You don’t have to be a rugby fan to appreciate it.

- Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen, The Sydney Morning Herald

A smart writer pursues one of Australia’s most elusive and enigmatic champions. The result is shrewd, measured, evocative, and, at times, transporting.

- Gideon Haigh, author of On Warne