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The film critic Paul Harris referring to the 1975 movie The Great Macarthy commented: “It surprised me that we would wait this long for a feature
film about a sport like Australian Rules football. It took a while didn’t it?”.
Five years later, of course, we got The Club – the big screen adaptation of David Williamson’s play about the brutal politics of a famous but failing club.
The Great Macarthy was made in the sex romp era of Alvin Purple and ‘Bazza’ McKenzie and so could not help itself.
The creator of McKenzie, Barry Humphries, plays the insurance tycoon and President of the South Melbourne Football Club, Colonel Ball-Miller Ad libbing and re inventing scenes Humphries revels in the role of loudmouth ‘benefactor’.
Eager to see Macarthy, the young star recruit and office employee, take a screamer he flings a bundle of insurance files at him, and during a game screams; “Rupture the bugger!”.
It’s interesting to note Humphries abhorred sport, particularly football.
Forced to attend games at his school Melbourne Grammar he either sat with his back to the action and knitted (!), or “shivering beside the mirey oval I would leap on a tram outside the school gates and make my way to the nearby city”.
The film’s major claim to prominence is the premonition that the South Melbourne Football Club would one day be owned by an eccentric businessman who travels by helicopter (having the club also relocate to a rugby league city was deemed too absurd).
Humphries’ Colonel Ball-Miller was Geoffrey Edelsten with elements of the uncouth Les Patterson thrown in (Patterson, as it happens, had just begun life as the Entertainments Officer of the St Georges Leagues Club).
Amazingly, Macarthy is a full forward given the then innocuous number of 39 which would become famous with the arrival of one Warwick Capper.
It also contains some valuable coaching advice for today’s wayward forwards: “It’s your follow through. It should be stronger. More of a line. Work on it!”.
Although the film portrayed the struggles of a simple country boy achieving fame in the city, it was considered at the time of release as “just a bit of fun”.
The Club was a slightly more complex and serious affair, and better directed. It also contained this marvellously sacrilegious outburst from a star player: “Alright, if you really want to know I’m sick to death of football and I couldn’t care less if I never play another game in my life. It’s a load of macho competitive bullshit!”
Both films suffer the age-old dilemma of sporting movies: actors can’t play athletes. John Jarratt (Macarthy) was a Sydney boy who had only ever
played rugby league.
He admitted later he couldn’t “catch”, handball or kick a football properly. Real game footage and a player double were used to disguise this fact but he’s sprung in the opening credits and some training scenes.
And The Club’s star Jack Thompson, playing a coach and former club champion, ruins everything when he attempts a handball at training.
The films aren’t, and didn’t aspire to be, works of art but they have become valuable nostalgia pieces.
Set during the time of Amco jeans, Ampol petrol and grounds advertising Winfields you can’t help but be drawn in. Players smoked and drank after games and were given sales or clerical jobs requiring little or no work by club sponsors.
There are the itchy woollen guernseys. Maccarthy gets to take his home – which would never have been allowed – to be worn by an otherwise naked Judy Morris who is also shown examining his jockstrap. I’ve never known any player who wore one.
The shorts became increasingly shorter as time went on. Capper’s always exceeded the limits of respectability and functionality.
The players looked a lot skinnier then thanks to the slim outfits and a lack of regimented weight training (the absurdly manic back-breaking sessions performed for the movie cameras don’t count as that).
The Club was filmed at Collingwood during the 1979 season and early 1980. As far as I know that has never been used as an excuse for the grand final losses suffered in those years.
It’s almost embarrassing to see the disintegrated state of Victoria Park , home of the most famous professional sporting club in the country. Even the members timber seats are rotting.
There is a scene showing cleaners sweeping up the steel tinnies that are scattered about the place. Then they set piles of rubbish alight in the terraces! South Melbourne’s home, The Lakeside Oval, seen in The Great Macarthy, doesn’t look
much better.
Certain players make regular appearances, including captain Ray Shaw and a young Peter Daicos looking about 45 years old. Rover Ronnie Wearmouth’s hair and CUB training shirt are everywhere, and Rene ‘The Tank’ Kink gets to call someone “a suck”.
Stan Magro plays himself being disappointed after losing a game. He was to look a lot worse at the end of the season after being one of Kevin Bartlett’s hapless opponents in the 1980 Grand Final.
The pre season runs through the streets surrounding Victoria Park and the neighbouring Yarra Boulevard bring back memories.
They unfortunately didn’t include the passing by of Her Majesty’s Prison Fairlea, a high security women’s prison whose invisible inmates would produce a chorus of wolf whistles that put the male occupants of city building sites to shame.
During filming a riot broke out in the prison and later several inmates escaped possibly to prey on Collingwood players who had fallen behind the pack.
Both films depict the era’s simplistic coaching techniques (circuit work and the jog twenty metres, sprint twenty) and unsubtle communication (“Move ya bloody arses!”).
The nasal race-call drone of Channel 7’s Lou Richards – so tedious to hear now – is heavily featured in the real and staged match footage.
The Great Macarthy and The Club aren’t masterpieces – perhaps the documentary is the best means of conveying the experience of a footballer – but as Jack Dyer said about the former: “The birds are good! The footy’s great! And there’s something different about it too!”
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