On Stage: The Ballad of Dan O’Malley

With the Australian Football League season coming to an end the staging of Paul Mitchell’s play The Ballad of Dan O’Malley is perfectly timed.

With the best draft picks on offer to the team who finishes on the bottom of the ladder, there are always questions about how hard these teams should try to win if playing finals isn’t an option.

Even supporters have been known to be upset when their teams win thus depriving them of the best future talent!

The only AFL team ever accused of not trying their best to ensure their team won was the Melbourne Football Club in 2009.

Mitchell’s  play The Ballad of Dan O’Malley, playing at Theatre Works’ Explosives Factory, fictionalises the story with emphasis on the impact on the Melbourne coach at the time, Dean Bailey.

The 80-minute play tells of Dan O’Malley (Justin Bell), a former footballer who coaches the Central Leopards.

It’s his first year as coach in the league and his appointment was a disappointment to another contender Tyson (Adam Balales), who still exerts a great influence at the club as football manager.

As the season progresses and the Leopards continue to lose, the pressure for the club to get the top draft picks for the following year intensifies, which of course means not winning matches.

This is especially so as the club is facing serious financial issues. And its president is dying from cancer leaving the running of the club to senior official Simon (Gregory Caine) whose ethics seem questionable.

The pressure on O’Malley and his wife Suze (Lyndall Grant) is huge as the coach tries to do the right thing. While his players, especially his favourite player Chad (Julian Weeks), are confused and disillusioned by some of the decisions being made and it goes against everything he believes in,  O’Malley feels he has no choice but to obey the club’s directive.

When the truth comes out as a result of Chad’s interview with journalist Charvi (Miles Paras), the League, led by CEO Barclay (Nick Mitchell), decides there’s only one person who should take the blame – O’Malley and he is suspended for 16 weeks.  No action is taken against anyone else at the club. As we learn Cain holds a gaming licence at a key club venue and  if club officials were seen to be involved in ‘tanking’, that licence could be revoked, threatening the club’s solvency, the League’s broadcast deal and lucrative gambling partnerships.

The impact of the suspension on O’Malley and his family is tragic.

According to Mitchell, the death of the non-smoking 47-year-old Bailey in 2014 of lung cancer and the reading of Michael Warner’s The Boys’ Club led to the play.

“I was incensed at Bailey’s treatment,” he explains.

“Here was a man who loved football for what it can be: a place for young men to grow and develop. He was 20 years ahead of his time when it came to player welfare and he was hung out to dry.”

The play is Mitchell’s attempt to give Bailey back his story and to ask uncomfortable questions about to whom, ultimately, the game belongs.

Thanks to the efforts of a hard-working cast, led by Bell, it does this.

And while the story is based on football, Mitchell is correct when he says: “You don’t need to know football to understand the politics, passion, humour – and heartbreak – that this play puts on show. This is a story that asks everyone what they will do to protect, from corporate greed and corruption, the things we care for and love.”

The Ballad of Dan O’Malley is playing at the Explosives Factory, 67 Inkerman Street St Kilda until August 22. For more information and tickets visit the Theatre Works website.

Jenny Burns attended the opening night of The Ballad of Dan O’Malley as a guest of the production company.

*Photo credit: Gavin Andrew