As you will see when you read on, he has put it all together beautifully and come up with a cutting play about the real business of the modern Aussie Rules back-room boys—dirty business. It is a simple plot about a once-successful footy club that hasn’t won a premiership in nineteen years. Run by a wheeler-dealer, meat-pie manufacturing megalomaniac of a president who has never pulled on a boot and who interferes with the selection committee, the Club is having trouble with its expensive, imported star; trying to get rid of its loyal, longtime coach and facing a strike from the rest of the team.

David Williamson may not see it—he says he is writing a play about organisational power—but if you can’t recognise among the people you know the characters and situations in The Club, then you’ve either spent the last few years in a Tibetan monastery or you’re a New South Welshman. In fact, that’s why it’s such a pleasure to write this introduction. Footy and its followers have been my life. I spent many of the happiest years of my life playing for Collingwood and with Collingwood people. I must admit I’ve never known a footballer who became a lover to his mother and his ‘legless sister’, as Jock so subtly puts it; but each of Williamson’s six characters is spot-on. It won’t take much to recognise the guys who run your club, no matter what team you follow.

Take Gerry, the ruthless, new-breed career administrator. Every club has at least one—the sort of guy who makes the bullets for all the other bunnies to fire. And there are plenty of footy führers like the blustering president, Ted—frustrated footballers who have followed their side every Saturday arvo since they were six. They might mean well, as Ted does, but they carry on like petty little dictators, sticking their noses where they ain’t wanted. And what about Geoff, the fabulous, flashy import, who doesn’t give a continental about the Club and its proud traditions or the photos of past greats hanging on the walls? Can’t you just see him in a fancy pair of white footy boots?