Book review: Personal Score by Ellen van Neerven

“Talking about sports is a way of talking about life,” writes Ellen van Neerven. Indeed, the first non-fiction book from the acclaimed First Nations author is a wide-ranging and highly personal volume of essays, poetry and memoir in which sport is both the main subject and a starting point for a discussion that encompasses sexuality, racism, gender, climate change, sovereignty, writing and van Neerven’s connection to Country as a person of Mununjali Yugambeh and Dutch heritage.

Titled Personal Score, it’s threaded through with the story of van Neerven’s own coming of age, told through the lens of their history as a keen viewer of and participant in soccer, in particular. We thus see them as “the jarjahm who tired of games the slowest”; an 11-year-old “football academic-in-training”; a bullied adolescent who discovers in sport “a way to communicate”, but also finds off-field cruelty creeping “in on what used to be safe corners of the oval”. Later, as a young adult “needing to establish my identity outside football and family”, they explore their sexuality and gender identity as a queer, trans non-binary person, connect with fellow Indigenous authors through storytelling, and find a sense of community among sporting teammates.