LAURIE: The press came to me. I didn’t go to them.

GERRY: All right, but you didn’t have to talk to them. Could we steer this discussion back to more fruitful areas? Danny. I think we’ve got the players’ point of view now, thank you.

DANNY: We want to know the outcome.

GERRY: All right. Wait outside.

DANNY moves reluctantly to the left door and goes outside, closing it after him.

Right, well it seems we’ve got a bit closer to the real seat of the problem. You think Ted’s been interfering in team selection and more specifically that he’s been protecting Geoff Hayward?

LAURIE: No, it’s not just that. I resent the fact that he’s come into the Club with no background and no experience and carried on as if he’s God almighty.

TED: I was elected by the members of this Club on a platform of reform and I intend carrying it through.

GERRY: In what other ways has Ted interfered, Laurie?

TED: I haven’t interfered in any bloody way!

GERRY: I’m just trying to get at the facts, Ted.

TED: I know what he resents. He resents the fact that I’ve brought a level-headed business approach to the Club, and that that approach is going to bear fruit. That’s what he resents. He’d like to take us back to the days of the glorious Club tradition.

LAURIE: Rubbish.

TED: We might have the proudest tradition in the League but we haven’t won a premiership in nineteen years. Tradition, tradition, tradition. We’ve been strangled by it. The days when recruits would flock to the Club from all over the country simply because of its name are long since gone. It’s no good waiting for players to come to you; you’ve got to go out there into the marketplace and fight for them.

LAURIE: I’ve been asking the Committee to buy players for years and you know it. Don’t give me a lecture on tradition.

TED: All right. So why are we fighting? I’ve gone in there and battled with the bloody diehards and for the first time in the Club’s history we’re buying players.

LAURIE: You’re buying the wrong bloody ones. I could have bought three players for the money you spent on Hayward, and every one of them would’ve been more use to the team than he is.

GERRY: (looking at his watch) We’re getting nowhere. Could I have a word to Laurie alone, Ted?

TED: Sure. I want this thing sorted out as much as you do, Laurie. I’ll go and get some cigarettes.

He goes to the door on the left, opens it, and turns to them.

Where’s all that spirit we had when I was elected last year. It can’t have evaporated. Remember my election slogan? The great leap forward—boom or bust. What happened?