There have been some standouts. David Williamson's play The Club set the standard in 1977; The Final Winter, a rugby league film starring Matt Nable went largely unnoticed; as did Anh Do's surprisingly poignant film Footy Legends. In 2012, Paul D. Carter won The Australian/Vogel Literary Award for his debut novel Eleven Seasons, a coming-of-age story set against Australian football. Howzat! Kerry Packer's War, which screened on the Nine network in 2012 one of the best, even for all its self promotion, insights into the on- and off-field workings of cricket.

It seems somewhat ironic then, that what could well become of the great Australian introspectives about sport might come from a quietly spoken woman who readily admits she's not that interested in sport.

Miriam Sved's Game Day captures the essential qualities of sport, here Australian football, in a way that's startling and surprising.

"I moved to Melbourne about 12 years ago from Sydney," Sved says, "I didn't follow rugby league or have a team when I lived there.

"When I got to Melbourne I didn't get the football thing for a long time but I was fascinated by it as an outsider. It's one of the first questions that you get asked down here, who do you go for.

"I shacked up with my partner, a big time footy fan, and basically started following her team.

"I got more and more involved in it, but was always able to view it with an outsider's eye."

It's this eye that's enabled her to write Game Day with such clarity and disconnection. As we spend a season with a fictional AFL team, from the pre-season recruiting in regional areas, through to grand final day we're presented with many different perspectives but are never forced to pick a side.

Sved engages a different voice for each chapter, each round: the rookie players, the club legends, the coaching staff, the fans, the mothers, wives and girlfriends, each developing the plot and the themes from varying angles.

"I wanted to explore the massive interdependence of all of these different perspectives," Sved says.

"I wanted to return to various parts of the story but do it from another perspective, if that makes sense.

"I had certain characters that I was pretty wedded to and I knew I wanted to work them in again down the track, but I knew I wanted it to be a story told from many angles, not giving precedence to anyone, for it to be quite egalitarian."

And perhaps that's the nature of sport. Even if it's a team game, it's a combination of individuals and they all bring something unique to the outcome.

Sved's insights into the workings of a club make you think she may well have spent a year sitting next to Eddie McGuire. But apart from a few contacts who had connections, a former umpire, someone who worked in public relations, a team doctor, she largely drew on media reports of real stories that were unfolding.

Game Day doesn't shy from the toxic culture of drugs, sexual assaults, gambling and cover-ups that have affected the sport over recent seasons.

"Unfortunately it wasn't a big stretch to write some of these things but I didn't want to demonise the sport, or any positions within it, most people in football come from a position of passion for the game."

What does she think the AFL will think of the book?

"Whether they'll think anything of the book at all!" she says.

"I think there's a real false dichotomy set up in much of Australian society between sport and culture and I think there's a lot of space for the meeting of those two massive movements.

"I would hope that people who come from the sports side of things would feel that, and people from the literature side too.

"I hope I've written something that's tried to bridge that gap and harness that passion that comes from the game."

Game Day is Sved's debut novel – "if you don't count the two in the bottom drawer" – and her fiction has appeared in Meanjin, Overland, Best Australian Stories and the anthology Just Between Us: Australian writers tell the truth about female friendship. After finishing "a big, all encompassing and grim" PhD at Melbourne University she is now working on another novel.

Game Day by Miriam Sved is published by Picador.