GERRY leaves through the right door.

TED: You should be a bit more tolerant of young Geoff, Laurie. He’s going to be a great asset to us sooner or later.

LAURIE: Can we leave Geoff Hayward and get on to this press statement?

TED: Sure.

LAURIE: One thing I want to make perfectly clear before I agree to sign anything is that I won’t have you coming down to the bench and trying to tell me how to run the game like you did last week.

TED: Danny was getting thrashed. I thought you mightn’t have noticed.

LAURIE: What do you think I am? An idiot?

TED: Why didn’t you shift him?

LAURIE: Who would I have put on Wilson? The obvious choice would have been pin-up boy Hayward but he was playing like a slug on tranquillisers.

TED: What about Holford?

LAURIE: Holford? Holford was holding our whole back line together. If I had’ve moved Holford their forwards would have run riot.

TED: Well, I still think you should have done something. And there was no need to bellow at me. I was only saying what everyone else at the ground was thinking.

LAURIE: It’s easy to see things wrong from up in the grandstand, but I’m the one who’s down there on the spot and I’m the one who knows exactly what my men can and can’t do, and I don’t appreciate interference from amateurs.

TED: I was only trying to help, Laurie. Your reputation suffered quite a bit of damage over that mistake.

LAURIE: It wasn’t a mistake.

TED: All right. Let’s forget the whole business and get onto the press statement. I was—(hoping that)

LAURIE: One more thing. Next time the negotiating sub-committee thinks of spending money on a player, I’d like to be consulted.

TED: You will be. We just didn’t have time.

LAURIE: Bullshit. You and Jock and Gerry got your eighty thousand and you weren’t going to let anyone else in on the act, despite the fact that you were specifically instructed by the full committee to consult me before any purchases were made.

TED: We were scared that the committee might reverse its decision to give us the money so we did things in a hurry.

LAURIE: I’ll say you did. You spent the whole eighty thousand on a dud.

TED: You’re wrong, Laurie. That boy’s a champion.

LAURIE: It doesn’t matter how much natural ability he’s got. If his heart’s not in it he’s a dud. Why didn’t you go for Fulton Masters and Andy Payne. You could have got both of them for that price.

TED: I did at first. Masters at any rate. I didn’t think of Payne. I was going to couple him with Franky Davis.

LAURIE: Davis is a bit past it but even that combination is a hell of a lot better than splashing it all on Hayward.