It’s been a long time, by his standards, since we last had a Discworld book for grown-ups from Sir Terry Pratchett (although fans lap up his young adult books with equal fervour, not least the splendid Nation). Sir Terry has built up such a broad canvas on which to work since he started (this is Discworld novel number 37), and developed such a rich palette of characters, that when it comes to deciding what to paint next the world is his mollusc, as one of his characters once said. Each book, as it has done for some time, takes an area of our existence, an institution or entertainment, and doesn’t so much give it a twist as reattach its head on back to front – we have had cinema, rock music, the Post Office, the newspaper industry, sectarian hatred, opera and many more – and as the name of this book will suggest to anyone who has ever listened to the classified football scores, this time it’s the turn of the beautiful game.

When the story opens, Ankh-Morpork’s version of football is far from attractive, however – a giant, heaving scrum of people, a melee to try and get a piece of wood wrapped in cloth, with no rules to speak of except to try and come out of the game alive. Famous players of the past might have scored two goals in their entire (probably short and violent) lives. There are the usual rivalries, hatreds, passions, dodgy pies – for all that it is clearly an awful spectacle, it’s recognisably football. The Patrician, who in this book shows more of his human side than we have hitherto enjoyed, decides it’s getting to be a threat to civic stability, and when an artifact is unearthed that hints at a more glorious past for the game, decides to try and improve the situation, his fall guys in this case being the corpulent, bickering, pedantic, food-obsessed faculty of Unseen University – the wizards must re-invent football (no magic allowed).

The stage is set, then, for the gowns to try and teach the town a thing or two – a new ball must be invented, the rules must be agreed, keeping to the spirit of the street version where possible, and a demonstration match must be staged. How hard can it be? Thrown in to the mix is the second plotline, also taking place within UU’s hallowed halls: who is the mysterious Mister Nutt, who talks as if he’s swallowed a dictionary and, despite being a humble candle-dribbler, turns out to be the University team’s ace trainer, someone who understands football at an intellectual and instinctive level. Nutt’s story, along with that of Trevor Likely, son of football hero Dave Likely (four goals!), Juliet and Glenda from the University’s night kitchen, becomes bound up with the fate of football, as Pratchett explores just how hard it can be to break away from one’s designated role in life and do something that makes you happy.

Unseen Academicals boasts some sparking comic passages – wizards trying to master football are putty in Pratchett’s hands. At one stage, the footie get rather pushed in to the background by the (far more profound) story of Mister Nutt, which while mildly frustrating is fairly understandable – but it all comes together for the grand finale, complete with the kind of organised chaos you can only find in Ankh-Morpork. What lessons can we take away from this book? Well, at the end of the day, the game of football is the winner here, everyone gives 110%, no-one (well, apart from the people who deserve it) is as sick as a parrot, and most importantly, it is possible to become more than who you are expected to be. Finally (and this is the kicker), no matter how much you try to explain it, nobody, in this world or the Discworld, understands the off-side rule.

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