The book has two dimensions which ultimately add up to one: the first is his personal story, the second his perspective — as a "traditional" football supporter – on the AFL "industry" and where it's headed.

Joffa's early life is a red, raw wound which he opens for the reader to gaze into. He pointedly declines to refer to his parents as Mum and Dad on the grounds that those terms imply a sense of warmth and family love that was absent from his early years. Given the seriousness of his claims, it needs to be said that we have only Joffa's word for this. He details a background of violence, tumult and neglect that resulted in him being made a ward of the state while still a child and put in Allambie Boys' Home. At the age of 14, he was living on the street.

Initially, he slept between sheets of newspaper in a laneway off Swanston Street, quickly becoming street smart and guarding against the paedophiles who trawled such places offering homeless youth food and a bed for the night. Then he teamed up with a slightly older kid called Stewie who sold his body in St Kilda for $20 a trick and bought food and cigarettes which he shared.

In an old warehouse near Victoria Market, the pair slept side by side, each watching out for the other. One night Stewie didn't come home. Joffa learnt he'd hanged himself in St Kilda. Joffa writes, "I'm crying now in the memory of Stewart. God bless ya mate, and thanks for looking after me". Shortly afterwards, Joffa bluffed his way into a job and found a place in a boarding house.

In subsequent years, Joffa married. He describes his wife as "a wonderful, caring Christian lady", but found marriage "too restrictive". A substantial part of the book is about his daughter Emma and her epilepsy condition. One of Joffa's life ambitions, it seems, is to be the caring parent he says his parents never were to him. Joffa has had his critics, but I have always found him a genuine bloke. In life as in football, he is a man of strong beliefs and this trajectory led to him being employed by the Salvation Army as an after-hours welfare worker.

Running through the narrative, however, is one word, one theme: Collingwood. A belief in the black and white is the one thing Joffa admits to having inherited from his mother. At school, he would sit in the back row and "daydream of Collingwood glory". During his homeless period, he got into Victoria Park om match day through a hole in the Turner Street fence. From an early age, he took criticism of Collingwood personally which, as a young man, landed him in fights he routinely lost. He calls Collingwood "The Suburb of Dreams" and wanders down Lulie Street dreaming that he's about to run into Jock McHale or John Wren.

Joffa's attitude to Collingwood is not unlike the attitude of old-fashioned Catholics to the Catholic church. There is only one club, Collingwood – the rest exist to provide Collingwood with a showcase to demonstrate their superiority. The appeal of Collingwood is universal, hence any action which excludes people, particularly those at the bottom end of the socio-economic scale, offends the principle on which Collingwood, in Joffa's mind, was founded. "I believe in the Collingwood way," he writes. "I will always stand and defend the poor, the sick, the unemployed and those afflicted with poverty. Collingwood is me and I am Collingwood".

The book has some humorous scenes. As a younger man, Joffa was arrested at the football – in the opinion of Joffa and those around him, unjustly. The police grabbed him by the arms, the Magpie Army grabbed him by the feet and a tug-of-war ensued with Joffa suspended horizontally above the MCG fence. The Herald Sun ran a front page photo with the headline "Ban the Boofhead". Then there were the stirring addresses he delivered to the pre-match throng at the Cricketers' Arms Hotel in Punt Road. The one he gave before the 2003 grand final between Brisbane and Collingwood reads like the sort of Armageddon-hued proclamations issued by groups in the Middle East: "Collingwood fans, be advised, we are three hours away from premiership glory. The nation as one will stand to honour The Great Magpie. A calm peace will shine onto the world and all who live in it…" Collingwood lost.

Joffa sees club president Eddie McGuire as "a true Collingwood man" who saved the club and restored it to its "rightful" place. Joffa supports Eddie and Eddie, it seems, supports Joffa. Over the years, Joffa's relationship with some of the club's employees has been fraught — in part, presumably, because Joffa's role as the archetypal Collingwood fan impinged on the club's corporate image, in part also, because he has criticisms of the club to the extent that it is being absorbed into the increasingly corporate world of AFL football.

Joffa describes the crossroads at which AFL football now stands as "television versus the gate". He rightly delivers derision on the treatment supporters have been dished out in recent years with games at ridiculous times, ticket pricing, exorbitant food. He declares, "I write in anger because I see the game being removed from the ordinary person". He says, rightly, that grand final day is not nearly as atmospheric as it used to be. "That's what happens when you ban the real people from attending". Joffa sees the AFL grand final becoming like the Melbourne Cup, an outing for socialites and corporate types.

On a cold wet night in 2014, Joffa found himself going to a Collingwood game — to his surprise — reluctantly. Inside the ground, he found half-empty terraces, lots of the old faces gone, the excitement a hum where once it was a roar simply because Collingwood was playing. He writes, "This is our life. It's us. It's what we've always done and slowly one by one, we're giving up … the lifelong supporter has been replaced by the blockbuster supporter".

Then there has also been the sharp reduction in the number of ways supporters can express themselves at AFL games. "It baffles me to try and explain why men in suits have sanitised their own supporters." He now finds "the fun and banter" he once gloried in at the footy as a member of the Melbourne City cheer squad at A-League games. Last year, he even "wagged" one Collingwood game, stayed home, watched it on TV and, again to his surprise, enjoyed himself.

It's hard to deny the case Joffa is making. The game is being taken away from him and people like him. His book is like a bright yellow buoy drifting out to sea, marking a significant moment in VFL/AFL history.

*  Isn't That Life? was produced by Busybird Publishing.