The_Club

The play “the club” is about an Australian football team over the season. Basically the play is about a club who pays a man “Jeff Hayward” lot of money to play for the team, he accepts but does not play well. This affects the coach “Laurie Holden”, whose coaching days is soon to be over with so many lost games. “Ted parker the president of the team is forced the resign because of an incident including him abusing a stripper. “Laurie” also discovers that the club is also thinking of giving him the sack so he tries to get Jeff Hayward to play better in the games. “Jock riley” is jealous of Laurie because he almost broke his record of 282 games; he also lost a game because of the alcohol. Laurie told the team that he was drunk and then soon after he became the new coach. Jock tried to ruin the team to get revenge on Laurie. Ted Parker does not reflect the image of a typical club president; he has no football background, but loves the club. Ted is ruled by his emotions and has difficulty hiding them when in an argument; he usually uses alcohol to balance things out. He associates rejection with respect; if he is rejected by other his does not show them respect. There are two obvious examples of this issue in the play. Firstly the team’s refusal of him not having a football background. Danny asks that the player’s point of view to be well thought-out and teds response to that was “the players can go to hell”. The response shows anger towards the players and implies that the players are all lower than him and do not have the power that he holds. Ted parker also thinks that the players can’t have his respect. Laurie uses simple sentences, this shows a wish to not communicate or be involved with ted. Then Ted reinforces his power over the players when he says “ I was elected by the members to lead this club and ill bloody well lead it, and if anybody tried to stop me ill crush them” this again shows that he carries a lot of angry, but mainly showing his sensitivity to rejection to his experience with a stripper. When “Danny Rowe” enters the room he states that the committees are a hundred percent on Laurie’s and the player’s side. The players also decide not to play if the committee does decide to sack Laurie. They all state that it’s just a threat but the team is very serious when Danny Rowe says “it’s no threat. We mean it. You sack Laurie tonight and you won’t have a team tomorrow”. This scene states that the club isn’t really a team because they are always fighting and don’t agree on anything. The team should be listening to each other if they want to start winning some games because no onions are being listened to properly. Laurie disagrees with the strike because his resigning not being sacked. In another Scene of the play, the meeting when they are paying geff Hayward money to play for the team, they offer him a reasonable amount but he wants more. Geff is greedy, rude, non respectable. When Geoff doesn’t play up to his stranded’s the teams gets angry. When geff says to Laurie that’s his doing his best Laurie replies with “no your not, you played two good games at the start of the year”. Geoff thinks his lost his touch and doesn’t deserve to be given all this money to play. This shows that he obviously doesn’t think too much about what is going on and is an easy going person. Geoff doesn’t think of the consequences of things. This is said in when. Laurie says I don’t think your trying one bit because no ones letting him. Geoff says” your stupid enough to offer me that sort of money, ill take it, but all you’ve bought is my presence out on an oval for two hour every Saturday afternoon. “And Laurie says “we thought we were buying a lot more than that. The club also tries to blame things on his girlfriend who lives with him. The two key scenes I selected are very important, one talks about how ted doesn’t like the fact that his not getting respected and then the players decide to go on strike and the second talks about the fact that Geoff isn’t improving on his skills as a player and the team isn’t happy about it either. Most of the character in the play don’t get alone much. There is always teams forming and fighting each other this isn’t good for the club.