Joey Rippa is one of the most naturally gifted footballers Englands Second Division has ever seen. Hes also one of the least interested in that fact. When Plymouth Argyles pre-season tour brings him back to Australia, Rippa arrives late, sunburnt, and carrying an impressive holiday paunch. His long-suffering manager Bobby Noll – the man who discovered him surfing a wave in Western Australia and somehow turned him into Plymouths Player of the Year – is not impressed. Back in England, Rippa is juggling the demands of a new season, an unexpected international call-up, a backpackers hostel full of 52 nationalities, an underground lawn bowls operation of questionable legality, and the arrival of Ned Buckley, a younger, fitter, more dedicated Australian who threatens to take everything Rippa has worked so hard to almost care about. Young Pilgrim is the second book in P.J. Lavertys RIPPA! series; a comedy about football, freedom, and a young man who would rather be anywhere else, doing almost anything else, and is somehow brilliant at the one thing he cant escape.
