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Word On Books
with Jeremy Fenton
A Decent Innings
By Pops McDonald, Published by Macmillan
 Pops McDonald never opened the bowling for Australia at Lords, nor did he pack the second row of the Wallaby scrum. Despite his 'eternal disappointment' he never achieved the honour of wearing his country's colours in international competition of any kind, but if his 'memoirs' are anything to go by he certainly should have.
Never one to limit himself - and believing that sport makes the man - throughout his life Pops played hard and fair in cricket, rugby (both codes), rowing, and boxing amongst other sports. And through a combination of his father and grandfather's always helpful (and copious) advice, and his own physical prowess, comes to embody the epitome of fair play - both on and off the field.
Although never playing for Australia, Pops still manages to lay claim to a large amount of unheralded achievement, not the least of which involves meeting Robert Menzies, boxing with duel Australian champion Lightning, inventing the shorter, thinner surfboard, playing cricket and rugger on the battlefields of World War II, and becoming a medical doctor.
A Decent Innings not only features Pops' name-dropping of a host of Australian legends (people like William Gocher who defied the law in 1902 to swim at Manly), but his encounters with the likes of Marilyn Monroe, JFK, The Queen, Rock Hudson, Henry Kissinger and a young John Lennon (who he advised to ditch the drummer).
With staggering prescience, Pops always manages to deliver the perfect advice to his famous acquaintances.
His long and crowded life probably would be a truly decent innings, if it weren't for the incidents such as eating those strange mushrooms in 1960s San Francisco ('I have a vague recollection of dancing down the middle of the street like a goodtime Charlie'), next to ignoring for three decades the woman he finally marries (all that sport takes time), and, perhaps, over-exaggerating his life story just a tad.
A Decent Innings is a wonderfully old-fashioned book, probably best described as being written by an earlier vintage Roy Slaven.
Cheeky, witty and great fun to read. An Australian sporting comedy classic.
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