Brandon Jack is the author of the acclaimed memoir 28. He’s also a footballer, who played for the Sydney Swans and in his debut novel Pissants he combines his sporting prowess and literary flare into a unique and memorable narrative. At an unnamed footy club the reserves team are waiting for the call up to the big leagues. Calling themselves the Pissants, they train at least as much as they complain, honing the skills that keep them nominally in the club’s good books. In the meantime they will drink, take drugs, kidnap dogs and every now and then reflect on what they’re doing. On its surface, Pissants could be taken for a romp through the bad behaviour of footballers. We get to know each of the group by their nicknames; Fangz, Stick, Squidman, Big Sexy and Pricey. The nicknames, and the stories that coined them, get their own chapter leaving the reader in no doubt these guys have a knack for trouble. There’s not a lot of football being played here, much to the Pissants' chagrin. But that doesn’t the boys don’t train and party hard, making sure they diligently uphold club culture, even if they don’t always remember doing it. The antics of the group are laid bare in a range of chapters as innovative in their style as they are often depraved in their action. We are privy to the many and detailed rules of pub golf, a closed Whatsapp group that couldn’t withstand public scrutiny, and an anthropologically driven interpretation of sports media interviews. In these sections Jack plays with form even as he dives beneath the surface of the players we might otherwise see as louts at best and criminals at worst. Because Pissants tells us the tales that don’t make the papers. Whilst it offers us an inside view of the semi-pro locker room it, Pissants also shows us exactly how raw, stupid and unthinking these guys can be. Except they’re not unthinking. Beneath the ill-advised decisions and startling acts of group think we are given an insight into the personalities and developing characters of a group of young men who probably have too much free time. Pissants isn’t a morality tale. That wouldn’t ring true for the assembled group of players, many of whom come out worse the wear they put themselves through. The novel does offer the reader a look at how the players are not just the drug-addled brats they sometimes pretend to be. The offer of something more is exemplified by the novel’s counternarrative. Eliott is offered to the reader unadorned by a nickname and adrift from the club. He’s travelling through Europe and seems to possess none of the joie de vivre his playing companions take into every experience. In Eliott we are given a look at the personality behind the facade. His search for something outside the world that offered everything until it didn’t, mirrors the journey each of his player mates is inching towards. Pissants is a cleverly written and immensely readable novel. Its larrikin air both depicts and subtly critiques its subject matter, giving the reader a chance to pull back the dirty socks and find out a little more about the masculinity fueling Australian sporting culture.
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Aug 22 202543 mins