High Tackle: A rugby novel

Lluís Pujol, a rugby coach, returns to Tarragona. He comes to train the local rugby team and to try to win back the woman he loves. A look at professional sport, sports journalism and the opium of the people. Also in impossible relationships, lost love and the Oval Universe, everything that is thrown comes back. To say that the novel’s plot is unexpected may surprise the reader. That’s part of its charm. It’s not what one expects when opening the book."Lost loves. The memory can be capricious. Often, it seduces oblivion. Sport is a tangle. It is like a spider’s web made of empty information that only sells images and unimportant facts. Professionalism at the cost of corrupting its essence while some surrender this essence in favour of frivolous things. But if the essence remains, there’s still hope.”“On those Saturday afternoons I watched rugby matches. The excitement was greater than that of football. In rugby there are no hiding places. “Just as there are none in this steady-handed novel, some losers are, in fact, winners.”Good novels shouldn’t be round but oval. Read more