FULL-TIME: A SOCCER STORY (M&S, Douglas Gibson Books 2008) is a would-be Cinderella story about a team of over-50s players from Vancouver who travel to Spain to play against much younger ex-professionals from the Spanish First Division. While investigating the beautiful game from the perspectives of midfielder, manager and referee, the author [pictured on the cover] provides a revealing and often amusing insider’s view of what it’s like to represent a “soccer poor” nation always ranked near the bottom of FIFA’s ratings.

Full-Time not only documents a year-in-the-life of an underdog team with two fullbacks who have just recovered from chemotherapy. Full-Time takes a critical look at the tribalism of sports; it re-examines the 2006 World Cup; it looks at the history of soccer in Canada (How many Canadians know that a team from Galt, Ontario won the second Olympic gold medal for soccer in 1904?); and it records secret dialogues between an over-the-hill soccer player and ‘Nettie Honeyball’—a soccer ball.

This book will appeal to all Canadians, young or old, male or female, who love soccer 365 days per year—and who no longer want instructions on how to take a throw-in. There are almost 900,000 registered soccer players in Canada—more Canadians play soccer than hockey—and yet Full-Time is the first literary book about the game from a Canadian perspective.

For more information on Full-Time, including radio and television interviews, visit http://full-timesoccer.blogspot.com/.