In the evening, I had a “blind date” with Alex. He’s an avid ‘sham reader who happens to be a playwrite and a rugby journo, but we’d never met in the flesh before. We arranged to rendezvous at the Newington to watch the big fight between The Man and The Machine. But Alex arrived too late for the fight. He’s crazily busy, directing about three plays around town at the moment. Instead, I spied my friend Darrin from Marrickville in the crowd, sitting with his buddy Lobster. Lobster told me he lives right on the Petersham/Stanmore border. None of us could make head nor tail of the rules of boxing. However, I was interested in the fact that Danny Green had advertising drawn on his back with texta, and Anthony Mundine didn’t. And I liked Mundine’s teasing performance. Sometimes he would stick his tongue out at Green in mid-box.

As the pub was emptying out, Alex arrived. He told us about one of his plays: “The Prince of Brunswick East”. The play is a father-son Aussie Rules story. For some reason it’s been playing to smaller audiences than he would have expected. Alex’s theory is that people who are into sport are maybe just not into going to plays. Or, it could be the AFL/Sydney mismatch. Either theory sounded pretty feasible to me. But then again, I’m neither a big fan of watching sport, nor attending the theatre. But, you know…I’ll try anything once. So we arranged for a “rematch” – and set another date – this time at the Livingstone on Friday arvo to watch the big rugby union match. “I’ll teach you all about rugby,” Alex said…