This Australian story about how competitive junior sport can turn nasty opens with a young player hurt during a soccer brawl.
It then backtracks to when Jonica’s 13-year-old twins Audrey and Alex try out for the Minotaurs team. Her lawyer husband, Ben, wants Audrey on the boys’ team because he is ambitious about her playing future.
But Audrey comes up against the manipulative Katerina, whose mother knows how to curry favour with the coach.
This book lays bare the world of junior sport where unrealistic parental expectations and rivalries spill over from the sidelines to suck all the joy out of the game for the young players. A no-holds-barred topical read, it made for compulsive reading.
