GEOFF: All right. If you really want to know, what’s going on is that I’m sick to death of football and I couldn’t care less if I never played another game in my life. It’s all a lot of macho-competitive bullshit. You chase a lump of pigskin around a muddy ground as if your bloody life depended on it and when you get it you kick it to buggery and go chasing it again. Football shits me.

LAURIE: I wish you’d let us know your attitude to the game before we paid ninety thousand dollars for you.

GEOFF: If you think you can buy me like a lump of meat then you’d better think again.

LAURIE: You took our money with your eyes open, Geoff. Don’t you think you owe us something?

GEOFF: If you’re stupid enough to offer me that sort of money I’ll take it, but all you’ve bought is my presence out on an oval for two hours every Saturday afternoon.

LAURIE: We thought we were buying a lot more than that.

GEOFF: Took your money? It was practically thrown at me. You weren’t there at that final sign-up session?

GEOFF shakes his head ruefully.

It was a joke. There were three of my guys on one side of the table and Gerry, Jock and Ted on the other. Jock was looking at me, and I’m not joking, as if I was a giant pork chop. He was almost salivating. I felt sure that any moment he’d bring out a little hammer and test whether my reflexes are as good as they’re cracked up to be. I couldn’t believe that those three goons were for real. By the time we’d got ourselves through the pleasantries I was getting pretty crapped off and I decided to make myself a bit difficult, so when they shoved the form in front of me to sign, I read it through four times, put down the pen, shook my head and said I wanted more money. I didn’t really expect to get any more—I just wanted to establish myself as something more than a tailor’s dummy—but it was marvellous. All hell broke loose. Your guys called my guys cheats, Jock thumped our President on the snout, and Gerry sat there stirring his coffee with a retractable biro. I was just about to burst out laughing when I looked across and there was Ted Parker sitting in the middle of all this pandemonium, his face as white as a sheet, scribbling frantically in his cheque book. “Ten thousand,” he yelled. “I’ll go an extra ten thousand, but that’s my limit.” Everyone had a ball.

LAURIE: Are you still living with that girl?

GEOFF: Susy? Yes. Why? Do you think she’s a corrupting influence?

LAURIE: She didn’t seem very interested in your football career when I met her.