JOCK: Don’t screw too many or you’ll get the jack.

There is a pause.

I get the feeling something is worrying you, Geoff.

GEOFF: You could be right.

JOCK: I’ve got an instinct about problems. Do you want to talk about it?

GEOFF: I don’t know whether I can.

JOCK: It won’t get any further than this room if you do. You know that.

GEOFF: Thanks.

JOCK: Have you been able to talk about it to Laurie?

GEOFF shakes his head. JOCK looks pleased.

Yeah. It’s hard to talk heart to heart with Laurie. He lacks that little human touch. When I was coach I used to spend hours with my men—joking, chatting, horsing around—but Laurie’s a bit stand offish. Not really one of the boys, don’t you think? Bit remote.

GEOFF: Well he hasn’t told me too many jokes.

JOCK: That’s right. No sense of humour. None at all, Bit of a fanatic don’t you think?

GEOFF: He lives for football.

JOCK: Right. I used to take the boys up to a country race meeting sometimes in the middle of the week to break the tension and we’d have a few beers and a laugh and it was great. But Laurie would never come. He’d stay back and train by himself in the middle of the oval for hours and hours. Bloody fanatic even then. Do the players really like him?

GEOFF: They seem to.

JOCK: I can’t understand that. He seems too stand-offish. I was one of the boys when I was coach and they’d do anything for me. Of course you’ll hear some stories that my men weren’t fit but that’s all bullshit. I didn’t make a god of fitness and overtrain my men like Laurie; but they were fit, and if you hear any stories that my discipline was lax and that I played favourites, don’t believe that either. If someone didn’t do what I told ’em I tore strips off them whether they were my drinking mates or not. Laurie started all those stories. He’s always had it in for me. From the minute he joined the Club he’s made it his business to rewrite the Club’s history with him as its biggest shining star. He was obsessed with beating my record of two hundred and eighty two games. Absolutely obsessed. He had a bad groin injury and a dicey hamstring and he was in agony every time he went out onto the field but there was no stopping him.

GEOFF: He didn’t beat it though, did he?