How to Make the World Cup and Survive Grade Five by Carla Fitzgerald
Published by UQP
Guest author post by Carla Fitzgerald about How to Make the World Cup and Survive Grade Five for Joy in Books at PaperbarkWords blog
Students would often give me ideas for my next ‘survive grade five’ book during school visits. Sometimes it was the quiet kid who’d sidle up after the presentation (‘I have an idea for your next book’). Sometimes it was during group question time (‘this is more of a comment than a question …’). Very often, the ideas were about football.
I too had watched the Matildas in the 2023 World Cup and was inspired by their spirit, athleticism and ability to capture the nation’s attention. It made me want to write a book about football, a feeling I’d never had before.
I knew I wanted to include the fun, humour and wish fulfilment of my previous books but I couldn’t write a character that was secretly playing for the Aussie football team. Maybe someone behind the scenes? I relied on the trusty ‘what if?’ technique to brainstorm ideas. What if a child was actually the coach? Who wouldn’t want to have the power of coaching our national soccer team? It was like fantasy football in real life.
This led me to the character of Ronni, an eleven-year-old football expert. Ronni has spent years watching it on a screen with her equally-obsessed parents. But when she and her best friend, Kai, are recruited to secretly coach the Australian women’s soccer team for the World Cup qualifiers, Ronni discovers life looks very different on the other side of the screen. Suddenly, she’s running training sessions on the sly, sidestepping suspicious players and trying to recall every motivational quote she’s ever heard.
The team is floundering, social-media critics (including her own dad!) are piling on, and worst of all, Kai thinks her tactics are way off. Turns out coaching is tougher than it looks! And her parents are too absorbed in their screens to help at all. With the team’s World Cup dreams slipping away and her friendship on the line, Ronni must choose: stay on the bench or get in the game?
Growing up in a family with a keen interest in football, I’d absorbed a lot of sporting knowledge along the way, without sharing the same obsession. I joke that my football knowledge was a process of osmosis. My children also play football and talk a lot about football, so that helped. I had both an insider and outsider perspective on the game, which was useful in writing the range of characters.
Despite this background, I did a lot of research on the game, strategy and the World Cup itself. I knew that if I got any of the technical elements wrong, football-loving kids would be on to me (perhaps during question time at the next school visit). I read books such as Soccermatics and It’s a Numbers Game, watched countless professional games while paying particular attention to what was happening on the sidelines, and studied many post-match interviews with coaches. Maybe that’s where all of Ronni’s cliched catchphrases came from.
Thankfully, my wonderful editor was across all the finer details of the game, including set pieces and corner kicks. We really got into the intricacies of certain elements of the game at times. There was quite a bit of discussion on how exactly the ball kids pass the ball to the players!
And as often happens in my work, deeper themes emerged in the writing process. I was thinking a lot about social media and screens and how insidious they can be in disrupting real experiences, human connection and family life. So I wanted to highlight that without demonising modern technology. I also couldn’t resist delving into the power of the arts (specifically music in this case) to inspire and connect.
I hope the result is a fun book about sport, friendship, family, technology, human connection and giving things a go.
How to Make the World Cup and Survive Grade Five
How to be Prime Minister and Survive Grade Five by Carla Fitzgerald at Paperbark Words
