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At a board meeting after Newtown has failed to make the finals, club president Murray 'Colgate’ Perry (John Jarratt) outlines his plans for a new image for the club, by recruiting a new style of player. Club stalwart Ned (Bob Baines) reiterates his opposition to the new plans, and is ridiculed by Colgate. Driving home from practice, Grub (Matt Nable) tells his teammate Billy (Conrad Coleby) that he will make sure he gets a contract by the end of the week. He then shows his young protégé some tricks of the game.
Curator’s notes
Nable’s script walks a delicate line between his admiration for the old 'incorrect’ ways of playing the game and his sense that it was, by the 1980s, a game in desperate need of a makeover. The club board is all ex-players, rather than professional managers, but the club’s answer to the need for new ideas is to give power to a spiv like 'Colgate’ Perry, a man the players think of as a joke – a real estate agent who never pulled on a pair of footy boots! There’s rich humour in both scenes we see here. A number of faces in the boardroom are familiar to league fans – they include former legendary players Tommy Raudonikis, Noel Kelly, Terry Randall, Max Krilich and Phil Sigsworth.
