Roffey is an apt choice to open From the Outer, a collection of thirty reminiscences and rants about AFL. Some of the contributors are involved in the AFL industry, while some are dedicated, lapsed, or reluctant fans (or, in the case of Catherine Deveny, a dedicated detractor). Either way, editors Alicia Sometimes and Nicole Hayes have sought diversity. Their conscious rejection of standard 'footy chat' is a welcome and at times potent disruption of the status quo.

The anthology's standout piece is Miriam Sved's essay, 'Rookie'. Sved interweaves multiple threads as she tracks her efforts to 'absorb some of the particles of AFL': her love life and, in time, her family life; the AFL and homosexuality; the AFL as religious faith; and the AFL and gender, including revisiting Anna Krien's recent portrayal of, as Sved puts it, 'a culture of sexual recklessness and ruthless mateship-building'. Sved also writes of 'relaxing into the specific obsession of Collingwood'. Her description of Collingwood's (now Carlton's) Dale Thomas on début is brilliant: 'He had twiggy, breakable-looking limbs, and in front of the camera he gulped and twitched like a fish.' I used to find attending Adelaide Crows matches worthwhile for the singular joy of watching midfielder Andrew McLeod play; Sved's essay evokes McLeod in its grace and poise.

Although nothing else in From the Outer quite matches Sved's piece, there are many other fine contributions. Sophie Cunningham reflects on Geelong's progression from perennial pretenders to one of the greatest of all-time great teams. Sam Pang and Brendan Murray remember sitting in the stands beside a retired Bruce Doull, the legendary Carlton defender: 'Bruce caught me watching him a couple of times. I tried to pretend I wasn't, but Bruce knew.' Christos Tsiolkas ruminates on growing up surrounded, not exactly happily, by football: 'I have one small regret about that long-ago place called adolescence, about being a gay youth at a time when homosexuality was illegal, shameful and silenced, when masculinity and femininity were still rigidly policed and self-policed: that I did not attend those games when the Richmond Football Club were the champions of the VFL.'

The anthology airs emotions ranging from elation to despair to (deluded) hope, but reflections on grief are particularly poignant. Tony Birch offers a beautiful and fine-grained meditation on the decline and death of the Fitzroy Football Club (officially, they merged with Brisbane) as well as the death of his grandmother. Van Badham writes about the death of her father and of her mother's emergence from 'the house of our sadness': 'for my 72-year-old mother, this meaning and purpose was in the community of fandom and her love of the Sydney Swans.'

AFL goal umpire Chelsea Roffey (photograph by Marcelo Silva, Flickr)

From the Outer is anchored by the ideal and the reality of diversity but also by each contributor's personal immersion in footy. Because of this, different pieces will likely resonate with different readers. I have read Anna Spargo-Ryan's 'How to Love Football' several times. Her opening statement, that her grandfather deeply loved 'his church, his wife, and the Norwood Redlegs', speaks so precisely to my own football life that it has sparked in me a desire to remember and perhaps reinterpret my grandparents' lives, their long marriage, and their deaths, as well as my own ever-more distant attachment to the mighty Redlegs (the SANFL being so diminished in the era of the national league). It is difficult to think of a better outcome from reading any piece of writing.

From the Outer is never boring, but it does have uneven patches. For example, Bev O'Connor's account of becoming a board member at the Melbourne Football Club contextualises her genuinely important and landmark contribution to the game; however, the writing itself is rather flat. Angela Pippos's 'Melbourne: The Year 2195' offers a welcome moment of futuristic speculation, but the narrative relies too heavily on in-jokes to sustain itself and to make its point.

Despite its many qualities, From the Outer feels slightly long, perhaps because so many of the contributions reflect in similar ways upon the mysterious pull of footy. Accordingly, it may be better read in short doses and in whatever order appeals (although I recommend starting with Chelsea Roffey). This South Australian reviewer also feels obliged to note a 'healthy' Victorian bias. All that said, the writers collectively support Sometimes and Hayes's assertions that footy need not be anti-intellectual and that footy and the arts can be teammates. From the Outer also shows, sometimes overtly and always implicitly, that sport and politics can, do and should mix.