The Club
Clip 2: Chasing a lump of pigskin
2 min 54 sec
Taken from the feature The Club (1980)
Original title classification M – this clip chosen to be PG
Availability of the complete title
This clip contains low-level nudity.
Curator’s clip description
After another loss and a skirmish in the change rooms, unhappy recruit Geoff (John Howard) tells the coach Laurie (Jack Thompson) that he can’t stand football, or the club, and admits that he has just played a game stoned on hashish.
Curator’s notes
Using the hallowed change rooms of Collingwood’s old headquarters at Victoria Park, the clip pits Laurie’s more sentimental view – 100 years of tradition – against Geoff’s more cynical view of the current reality. His reasons for not wanting to play are deeper than the cant he recites about ‘macho bullshit’, in which he’s parroting his university-educated girlfriend. He has no trust in the traditions, because he thinks no one else does either. Football is a business now and he doesn’t like being a traded commodity.
Paul Byrnes, curator
have teachers’ notes.
