This appealing picture book with detailed text (perhaps suitable for upper KS1 and lower KS2) sets a story about football and friendship against the backdrop of South Africa's transition from apartheid. Hector, a black boy from a township, is invisible to the group of white boys whose football game on a fenced-off pitch he watches whenever he accompanies his mother to her work in an affluent neighbourhood. With the advent of Nelson Mandela's premiership sport comes to play a crucial role in uniting the country when the national football team - no longer segregated - unexpectedly wins the African Cup of Nations. In this new era, football works a similar magic on the barriers between Hector, the township boy, and one of the white boys whose game he is now invited to join. An afterword gives an outline of South African history and the country's progress towards a multiracial democracy.