“The money part of the game has turned it into a big business with the game part dumbed-down for television spectacle,” said Bob, who together with his wife, Joy, moved to Nambucca Heads in 1976.

“It’s too repetitive and predictable - the art has gone.

“To us, it’s no longer a game or a sport, just Roman circuses for a jaded population.

“I didn’t want to write a book about me. This book is about how badly modern league compares with the way it was played when it was still a game. This is a book that had to be written if we want our grandkids to be playing it.”

When Bob and Joy arrived in Nambucca, they ran a seafood and hamburger takeaway shop. But they baulked at the long hours, so Bob went into house painting for more than a decade.  

An industrial plumber by trade at Tooths Brewery in Sydney, Bob later went into welding in this area, and is still at it at age 79.

Bob’s book took more than five years to polish.

“We’ve done a promotional print run of 100 copies to raise money for a bigger print run. We’ve put four copies in local libraries for the really curious,” he said.