On one hand, Australian rules is just a game where people kick a footy a lot. But, for author Andrew Mueller, it might also say a few things about the only country who loves it.
Poisoned chewing gum is something you expect to see appear in a tacky espionage novel, not a history of Australian football.
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And yet, there it is, in a footnote on page 60 of Carn, the new book from Wagga Wagga-born, London-based journalist and author Andrew Mueller.
The chewie story goes like this. In the 1920s one of the-then Victorian Football League's top goalkickers was Jack Moriarty.
He played a season or two for Essendon before switching to Fitzroy. While playing for the Maroons (as Fitzroy was known before later becoming the Lions, albeit not before a 19-year run of being called the Gorillas), someone decided Moriarty had to be nobbled ahead of a match against Carlton.
And so this unknown person slipped the goalkicker some poisoned gum. It didn't really work - Moriarty went on to kick four goals and Fitzroy won the game.
And that story is just in a footnote. Seriously, if a footnote is that entertaining, just imagine what the rest of the book is like.
Carn - the name comes from the abbreviated fans' exhortation "come on!" - is a look at 57 Australian rules matches starting in 1897 and finishing in 2017.
As well as taking a deep dive into the history of the sport - poisoned chewing gum included - Mueller also reflects a little about the country that plays it.
Through the sport, he touches on issues like war, racism, politics, art, business, crime and even international relations. It might seem a stretch for a footy book, but Mueller says it makes sense.
"There's a near-symmetry of the foundation of the VFL in 1897, and the federation of Australia in 1901, so Carn has pretensions to an extent of using the nation's game to tell the nation's story," he says.
"I kind of hope, possibly optimistically, that someone who is interested in Australia outside of being interested in Australian football could get something out of it."
He freely admits he's not expecting Carn to sell in droves in overseas markets. That's partly because hardly anyone but Australians will even understands the title - forcing Mueller to explain it over and over - but also because the game of Australian rules is very much Australian.
While many people here love the sport, it really hasn't gained traction anywhere in the world despite the league's efforts to send competition games off to places like Shanghai.
Mueller thinks that might be part of the reason Australians love it so much; it's our eccentric sport and were it to take off elsewhere then that uniqueness would be gone.
"My feelings about attempts to interest the rest of the world in the game are mixed," Mueller admits.
"While I think it's a great game and I'm always heartened to hear of incongruous flarings of it elsewhere - I was watching a thing earlier today about someone training kids to play it in Pakistan, which was joyous - I don't really care whether the rest of the world catches on or not.
"I do worry vaguely - though I could be wrong - that Australian football's peculiarity is part of the game's appeal, that in an increasingly homogenised world we enjoy having this weird thing that only we do and nobody else quite understands.
"I might think differently about the Shanghai games if they hadn't all so far been absolute garbage played in front of small, indifferent crowds.
"Maybe that will change, but I'm a big believer in betting with form."
While Mueller has chosen some of the legendary matches - including the 1945 bloodbath grand final and the brutal, tough 1989 decider - most of the 57 games that feature in Carn weren't chosen because they were absolute crackers.
"There wasn't an especially rugged criteria," Mueller admits.
"Some were obvious inclusions, because they were landmarks - the first 100th game by a League player, the first VFL game played for points outside Victoria, the highest score by a team or most goals by a player in a single game, etc.
"Some were obvious if not obligatory inclusions in a book contemplating the game's mythology - the "Bloodbath" Grand Final of 1945, the Battle of Windy Hill, and so on.
"But other than those, I was looking for games which were great self-contained stories, and/but hopefully also illustrations of a wider point about how the game and/or Australia has changed down the decades."
Some of those stories include Robert Menzies watching Carlton play from the back seat of his Bentley, North Melbourne bringing an elephant onto the field and the strange crowd chant every time Blues player Val Perovic kicked the ball.
Mueller admits this could be classed as "weird stuff - and there's quite a lot of weird stuff in the game's history" but still sees these tales as illustrative of wider points.
"So the chapter on a game Menzies watched from his Bentley on a bespoke platform at Princes Park looks at how the game has loomed in the affections of various Australian prime ministers," he says.
"The one about the runaway elephant at Arden Street considers the increasing intrusions of extra-curricular entertainment, and so on.
"The one about the "Woof!" chant that used to pursue Val Perovic is probably pretty gratuitous, but it always made me laugh, so it's in."
One footy-related issue with wider ramifications - the Adam Goodes "booing" saga - has returned via two documentaries.
The two-time Brownlow winner was booed out of the game; an action that was recognised as racially motivated - except, of course, by those doing the booing.
Mueller tackles the issue of racism in two separate chapters - one on Nicky Winmar's iconic pose where he points to the colour of his skin and another on Goodes' indigenous dance after kicking a goal in a game played during the Indigenous Round.
For Mueller, he can't fathom why anyone had any issue at all with Goodes' actions - either in doing the dance or earlier objecting to a crowd member calling him an ape.
"Adam Goodes did two things that he was perfectly entitled to do - in one game, he called out racist abuse, and in another, he celebrated a goal with an Indigenous dance during Indigenous round," Mueller says.
"I cannot fathom how anybody could have any problem with either, unless they also have a problem with what those moments represented, which was a powerful, assertive and successful Indigenous person insisting on respect, and/or enjoying a moment of triumph.
"That one of the greatest players of all time - and an altogether deserving Australian Of The Year - felt unable to take his grand final day lap of honour after retiring should be a more widespread cause of embarrassment."
As for the claim Goodes was booed for "staging" free kicks, Mueller sees that as nothing more than a feeble excuse.
He points to two figures - Goodes' 372 games and his 356 free kicks.
"That's vaguely comparable with, say, Matthew Pavlich, who played 353 games, and received 342 free kicks, and I don't recall anybody booing him for going over too easily," he says.