GEOFF: She’s not.

LAURIE: She thinks it’s macho-competitive bullshit too?

GEOFF: You can’t exactly blame her, when it gets to the point where we start coming to blows behind the lockers.

LAURIE: How’s your jaw?

GEOFF: Still sore. How’s your gut?

LAURIE: Likewise.

GEOFF: Push-ups are one thing but slugging me into submission just isn’t on.

LAURIE: I know. I’m sorry. I love football and I love this Club and it’s a bit hard for me to understand someone who holds both of them in contempt.

GEOFF: Love the Club? Jock, Ted and Gerry?

LAURIE: The Club’s not Jock, Ted and Gerry. It’s nearly a hundred years of history.

GEOFF: Yeah. Well I missed the history and copped Jock, Ted and Gerry. Honestly, what’s an old fool like Jock doing in a position of power?

LAURIE: He was a great player, and whether he deserved to or not he won four premierships when he was our coach.

GEOFF: Didn’t he deserve to win them?

LAURIE: We’re not here to talk about Jock.

GEOFF: Was he a bad coach?

LAURIE: Yes.

GEOFF: How come he got those premierships then?

LAURIE: (irritated) He got them in his first six years, in the days when the best talent in the country was fighting to get a purple and gold guernsey. By the time I took over all of that had long finished.

GEOFF: Someone told me that you were responsible for getting him the sack.

LAURIE: I thought he was coaching disgracefully and I did some lobbying. I’ll admit that to anyone. He dosed himself up with whisky before the ’67 Grand Final and halfway through the last quarter he took Benny McPhee out of the centre where he was really firing and put him at full forward, where he was never sighted. It cost us the premiership. Why are you so interested in Jock?

GEOFF: I’m not. It just amuses me to see you guys sticking around in this Club for years, having your little power battles, cutting each other’s throats and filling up your lives with petty nonsense. So Jock was a bad coach and you lost a premiership. What does it matter? It’s not important.

LAURIE: I might be old fashioned but it seems important to me to step in and do something when a great Club’s going downhill because of incompetent coaching.

GEOFF: I don’t want to play the devil’s advocate but you’ve done some pretty bad coaching yourself lately.

LAURIE: Such as?

GEOFF: Such as not shifting Danny off Wilson last week. He was getting thrashed.

LAURIE: I know.

GEOFF: Wilson was leaving him for dead.

LAURIE: (irritably) I know.

GEOFF: Then why didn’t you shift him?