With great expectations I bought my ticket for this last Friday, and while it wasn't rugby league's answer to The Club in the manner I'd been hoping for, the rewards in quality of characterisation and the film's theme of corporate power eroding the bonds of community and family and the examination of what it means to be a man more than make up for it. A quality debut performance from Matt Nable ably supported by Raelee Hill as the wife holding Grub's family together lead the way, with good support from Nathaniel Dean as the heir apparent to the old lion's crown. Matt Johns rises to a level well beyond the Footy Show's ouevre, the pillow fitted unnecessarily under his shirt with the aim of giving him the beer-stained look of coaches of yore notwithstanding. There's a few vague references to ethereal concepts of "the game" that don't quite sit true and the cry for the loss of league's golden era doesn't blend fully with the other elements of the story; John Jarratt's corporate figure intent on bringing the old footballer's era to an end is an almost comedic caricature, but the scenes bringing Nable's Grub and his brother Billy, whose star is in the ascendant with the Winfield Cup and associated riches just around the corner, together in conflict acquit Nable's writing well. I couldn't go further without mentioning Kate Mulvaney's gems of support as Kate, doling out advice over the bar as the mother some of these lonely boys never had. As with so many sports movies the theme is loss, introspection and redemption, but its qualities are best appreciated from a human point of view with sport as a background and conduit for the story. A high quality debut effort, with a soundtrack of summery Aussie nostalgia and cameos from a selection of familiar players and coaches of yesteryear when smoking on the reserves bench and beers after training were part of the fabric of Australian sporting life certain to bring a smile.
