The truth is that football holds an uncomfortable mirror to the society that plays it. It’s as boring as the beholder, inviting Australia’s patriotic conceit and reflecting its global insignificance. At worst it’s an immature culture cringe, but at best it’s a pure meritocracy and nothing can connect this lonely, isolated rock to the rest of the world quite like it does.

This is an extract from the incredible new Australian football book The Immortals of Australian Soccer, which recounts an unparalleled history of Australian football through its greatest moments and players. The book is available now through all good bookstores or online here.

That’s why the following stories transcend sport: each is a unique Bildungsroman. Some of the footballers within these pages were born outsiders longing for a culture they didn’t understand, while others were frightened teenagers travelling alone to hostile lands. Some attempted to change a nation, and others tried to connect with a damaged family. Many became global superstars, and a select few scrubbed toilets or posed naked for calendars just to fight for social justice.

The remarkable ethnic, sexual, physical and financial diversity of Australia’s greatest footballers create the most accurate national representation in Australian sport: they’re all united by the round ball’s spotlight.

It’s been 100 years since the formation of the first Australian national football team. This book is foremost a centennial celebration of the incredible athletic feats – the quintessential underdog tales – that have defined Australian sport to the wider world. However, the individual stories behind the triumphs provide the real inspiration. They’re a time traveller’s guide from when Australia was regarded as a global backwater whose best and brightest were forced to leave for worldly recognition, a time when professional football meant battling foreigners on their turf for their jobs, and representing Australia deserved barely an inch in the back pages. It spans the length and breadth of Australian football to the modern era, when Australia boasts one of the greatest footballers in the world, yet still the fight continues.

Some loathe Australian football as a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Scoreless draws and ethnic wars scribbled by hoodlums and zealots, sheilas, wogs and poofters. To others it’s just ersatz: Australia is where the world game ends, and not with a bang but with a whimper.

The obstacles each of these footballers overcame reflect Australia’s eternal struggle for recognition on the world stage. Thousands of footballers made the pilgrimage; the following 18 are the strongest who survived. If Australian football ever truly finds its feet, then Australia will have found a greater place in the world. That may mean we’ll never see the likes of these again – they’re immortals because they’ll never be replaced.

This is an extract from the incredible new Australian football book The Immortals of Australian Soccer, which recounts an unparalleled history of Australian football through its greatest moments and players. The book is available now through all good bookstores or online here.