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Chapter 1: What inspired Gordon D'Arcy and Paul Howard to write a children's football book?
The World Cup is well underway, so there's probably no better time to release a children's book called Let's Play Football, written by the now well-established writing duo of former rugby international Gordon Darcy and best-selling author Paul Howard, and illustrated by Ashwin Chakko. It takes its young readers on a journey from pre-match warm-up right up to lifting the cup.
But what qualifications do a former rugby player and a man best known for satirising the world of Irish rugby have to write a book about football? Well, let's find out. Gordon, Paul, good morning to you. You're very welcome. Gordon, a book about football written by a rugby player. Are you gaslighting your soccer-playing contemporaries?
That's a really hard opening question. I'm glad you got that one.
Well, Paul likes to try and educate me on football quite regularly at every point. One of the key points he stayed away from this year was about who won the league in the Gordon is an Arsenal fan.
So he's kind of an anti-football fan, I would say, in a lot of ways. Having watched Arsenal this season play such ugly football, but effective football. But I'm happy to say, I mean, Let's Play Football is going to introduce football to kids from sort of two upwards by... just showing them the set pieces of the game. They can stand waiting for a corner, for a header to come in.
But what's great is there are no Arsenal tactics. You actually have to play football.
It is D. Mikel Arteta'd. Fair enough. Gordon, one of the things that's lovely about it is it's not just getting kids to read, it's getting kids to be active.
Yeah. So I had the idea for this book. And thankfully, Paul didn't ghost me when I rang him to say, listen, would you like to do this with me again? I just thought two heads would be much better on this. I do. The first one, I'd have lots of input. The second one, I would probably need a large input.
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Chapter 2: How do Gordon and Paul blend rugby and football in their storytelling?
And thankfully, Paul was able to explain the nuances of football to me in this game. But when we had the idea for the first book. Which is about rugby. Yeah, it was, you know, let's play rugby. I have kids and I've gone through the whole spectrum of books. I've got, my daughter's 11, my son is nine and I have a five-year-old. So I've gone through the whole picture books.
Now we're into, you know, graphic novels and, you know, my son has started the Harry Potter. So there's lots and Gordon Gaines books. So, We've gone through the whole thing, but I remember at one point going through with the book and there was nothing really about sports. I just thought that was a lovely idea that we could take something with.
So we brought it to Paul and then Paul managed to put a little bit of bones on the idea and Little Ireland saw what we had and brought it through. We always knew football was going to be the second book.
Yeah, and Paul, take me through. So it starts with the warm-up, basically, and you get the kids to do the warm-up while they're in.
The idea is the same with the rugby. The first book is the rugby book. You do all of the set pieces involved in football. So you stand waiting for a corner to come in. And the point of view of the book, the POV, as Ashwin, the artist, would call it, is... It's like a computer game.
So you're looking at the goal, the ball is just above your head and you have to jump, you know, do the real motions, jump up and head the ball. Then you take a free kick, you take a penalty. In the rugby one, there's, you know, you get to kick a last minute conversion to win the match. That's the idea. The idea is to put the young reader front and centre.
Maybe they haven't started playing competitive sport yet, but you can do this in the living room.
Or maybe they're on a fast track and they're in an academy at five and they're getting pushed hard.
Maybe this book belongs in the Leinster Rugby Academy.
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Chapter 3: What unique elements does 'Let's Play Football' introduce to young readers?
And there is a fall off rate, you know, as they as they get older and become teenagers. And and there's also the same fall off rate with reading as well, unfortunately, you know. So, yeah, it is. It's a. It's a way to introduce them early on to both reading and exercise. And, you know, there's like you said, there's the warm up element at the start. So there's no reward.
There's no instant rewards, instant gratification. There's you know, you have to actually work to get to the end of the book. So you have to you have to kind of do that.
the athletic things and then at the very end there's this great joy the last the last two page spread is a trophy that you get to hold up Gordon open up the page there and hold it up to the camera go on it's been a while since I've held up a trophy that's wrong
Hold it up there and shout woohoo as loud as you can. I can really see this appealing to kids, actually. It's a great old fall, isn't it?
This is the bit again, so you tell them to march around the room. And again, my humble five-year-old was strutting around the room with her trophy above her head.
And one of the really nice things about it, Gordon, is it's a mixed gender team. So girls or boys, it could appeal to them just as equally.
Yeah, absolutely. And that was something we were quite conscious of with the first book, that we wanted to make it a little bit more collaborative, a little bit more open. And because particularly at the ages there, it's, you know, when the kids are playing sport at that age, it's all mixed, it's all getting in and there's a much wider playing base there.
Yeah. Paul, obviously the World Cup is on and everything and looking at your social media, you might be spending a few minutes watching.
It's killing me, this World Cup, David. Too much? I'm staying up all night, you know, like three times in the last week I've stayed up all night watching football. The last time I stayed up all night was my Debs and that was like... I was in black and white 38 years ago. I'm actually doing, I'm just doing slightly less crying now than I was the night we did. But have you been happier?
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Chapter 4: How do Gordon and Paul encourage physical activity through their book?
And that just struck horror into me.
Yeah, as an athlete, Gordon, I mean, the water break in some of the venues, like the heat and the humidity is just insane. I mean, they do need them. Listen, absolutely.
You do think 15 minutes is a 10 or 15 minutes?
No, it's a three minute water break. But the thing, every 25 minutes. So they've broken the game up into quarters. And that's kind of, I think that's... It's totally changed because the coaches are instructing the players in the breaks. So we're told it's to take on water. Coach comes on the pitch and they do a sort of tactical reset.
And you would know this, obviously, being a sportsman, that if you break a game up into two, four quarters as opposed to two halves. Well, it's the Americanisation of it. It changes your mentality.
Yeah, but it's the Americanisation of it where they're splitting straight to ads. So you do feel it's been very much, we needed to get ads into this, into a non-traditional American sport as quickly as possible. And it was very serendipitous that we were playing in the middle of the summer and it was an opportunity to go into it. I can't see European football, there we go,
European rugby might do it but European soccer wanting to embrace that going forward it's interesting because I think I mean I think France or Argentina are going to win the World Cup because there was one night last week where France and Argentina played and they were just sensational but I think we're going to see a dark horse emerge and it's going to be a team that learns how to manage the dehydration the hydration breaks best
Right, okay. There was never any danger of you pursuing soccer as a career rather than rugby, was there? Given that you're an Arsenal fan and not being able to play football is a qualification.
The only sport I played was hurling until I was about 12. So I'm from Wexford. I might have forgot my maths book, but I never forgot my hurl going to school. So then I went to a boarding school in Kildare and I went in and I started playing rugby. Wasn't very good at that. And everybody followed me. I was like, oh, I need to figure something out. So Ian Wright was around at that time.
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Chapter 5: What challenges do children face in maintaining interest in sports?
He still lives. He still lives on in the pages of the Irish Times every Saturday. And I still really enjoy writing it. So, I mean, I've no plans to say goodbye to him anytime soon. Great.
OK, and what about Bad Sisters? We might see you on the writing credits again, will we?
Yeah, I loved working on Bad Sisters. Remember your NDAs? We have this running joke that I said in an interview once, I can't talk about it, I've signed a DNR. And Gordon had to nudge me and say, that's a do not resuscitate, you've signed an NDA. But yeah, I mean, look, it was brilliant to work on. We did two series of it. Fantastic to work with Sharon Horgan.
She's just the most impressive person I've ever worked with, I think, apart from obviously Gordon Darcy. Thank you. No, but I don't think there's going to be a third season. It was great.
The second season actually was great.
as well it was it was it was real and what a what a crew to get to work like what a group of actors okay gordon you've done rugby you've done football is hurling next or something next yeah yeah no it's like this and like rugby was really it was kind of to test the to test the water to see how it would be received and like a huge thank you to little ireland for
taking it on but you know football again is we're getting to see great traction with it and yeah we hopefully have plans for a few more sports Ryder Cup is next year so yay listen you know let's play golf that'll be for an older audience yeah okay Gordon you were lifting the trophy earlier on I don't know whether you're off to Croke or later or Leinster going to do it
Do you know, I was really, really confident last week. And then I saw the Bulls team and you're kind of looking where the deficiencies are in the Bulls team. And you're looking at a couple of injuries for Leinster and a little bit of uncertainty around selection. And I'm less confident this week. So I think the biggest deciding factor will be, for me, will be home advantage. Do the Bulls...
travel well if they travel well I think Leinster are going to have to really really fight for this game and they may not have enough but there's you know there's been an edge to Leinster all season and I think that's been reinforced after the After the loss in the Champions Cup. So it's a really unknown quantity. If you look at both semifinals, the South African teams came back.
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