Eleven-year-old Ronni is basically a professional athlete … at watching sport. If it’s on a screen, she’s glued to it – just like her parents. But when Ronni and her best friend, Kai, are recruited to secretly coach the Australian women’s soccer team through the World Cup qualifiers, she discovers life looks very different on the other side of the screen.
Suddenly, she’s running training sessions on the sly and sidestepping suspicious players. 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! With their World Cup dreams slipping away and her friendship on the line, Ronni must choose: stay on the bench or get in the game?
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How to Make the World Cup and Survive Grade Five
by
Could you coach the Australian women’s soccer team to victory? In her funniest book yet, Carla Fitzgerald serves up a winning middle-grade story about sport, friendship drama and finding the guts to have a go.
Carla Fitzgerald
Carla Fitzgerald is a writer, a recovered lawyer and a mum of three from Sydney. She studied arts and law at university, and worked at the Australian Human Rights Commission. Only after that did she rediscover the great fun of making stuff up. Carla is a tutor at the Australian Writers Centre, a coach at the Harding Miller Education Foundation and a Books in Homes role model. Her favourite things to do are write, walk, read, eat and hang out with her family. Not necessarily in that order.
