The Game: A Journey Into the Heart of Sport

is a multifaceted reflection on sport. It is part memoir, outlining Tadhg Coakley’s time as a player and fan, and how sport has shaped his life. But it also tackles sport on a universal scale—the good and the bad—and its immeasurable influence on our world. For fans, sport can be all-consuming. Indeed, we are consuming sport in ever greater gulpfuls, often blindly. It has a dark side; it is rife with corruption, sexism, homophobia, nationalism, and a raft of toxic masculine behaviour, and Coakley interrogates his own attitudes on each of these fronts. On the other hand, sport builds all manner of valuable connections and communities, and in sport—as in art—people can forge their own identities with grace, imagination, and the possibility of what may be. This duality is one of the most fascinating aspects of sport. Written with warmth, openness, and keen insight, is an entertaining and thought-provoking meditation on the uniquely intense highs and lows of loving sport in today’s world.