John Doyle on an Australian sporting legend in Blessed: The Breakout Year of Rampaging Roy Slaven

Good Reading Podcast

It's 1967 in Lithgow (the 'arsehole of the universe') and a young Roy Slaven is a promising student at the De La Salle Academy. He is already demonstrating early evidence as a sporting savant. Blessed with uncanny abilities with the ball, Roy experiences a moment of religious enlightenment when Uncle Baz presents him with an Australian Rugby League team jersey. John Doyle was right there beside Slaven during this formative year and when Slaven approached him to record those momentous times in book form, he could hardly refuse. The result is Blessed - an honest and truthful account of the life and loves, the trials and tribulations, and the triumphs and tragedies of the boy who was to become the man, Rampaging Roy Slaven. In this episode Gregory Dobbs chats to John Doyle about the genius behind the torpedo pass, what constitutes 'Catholic values' and the making of Rampaging Roy Slaven.