Interview - Barrie Rutter: Footballers' lives from 1913 make high drama

Blackton Rovers is in financial straits. Desperate for funds, owner Austin Whitworth sells his star centre forward, Jack Metherell, to a rival club on the eve of a crucial match.

A poor result could see Rovers relegated to the Second Division, so Whitworth calls in one last favour from his former golden boy. Metherell is asked to throw the match and has to decide which is more important – old club loyalties or professional honour.

The Game was written by Harold Brighouse in 1913, but it's easy to see why Northern Broadsides' artistic director Barrie Rutter thought a story of high sporting drama and the perils of stardom might appeal to modern audiences.

"Everyone remembers Brighouse for Hobson's Choice," says Rutter, who as well as directing, also plays Whitworth in the touring production. "He's become known as a one-play wonder, but he was a prolific writer. By the time of his death he had 14 other plays to his name, but over the years only Hobson's Choice has survived in most people's memories.

"When The Game was first performed, it got terrible reviews. The critics didn't think football was a fitting subject matter for audiences. It was killed by snobbishness and promptly disappeared into oblivion.

"I heard about it a few years ago, but struggled to track down a copy, until eventually we found a script in a Canadian University Library. When I read it, it was a revelation."

Northern Broadsides had originally hoped to stage The Game during the 2006 World Cup but, unable to find a slot, its revival was postponed for another four years.

"Obviously I had hoped for a sublime England performance in South Africa, rather than the shambles that we got," says Rutter, a Hull City fan. "But it doesn't matter, The Game is much more than a play about football, it's about the class divide, relationships and family, everything you want from a good drama."

In Brighouse's world, Metherell may be the greatest footballer in the country, but he still lives with his formidable mother in a house with no inside toilet. He's in love with the chairman's daughter, but as a working class lad he soon realises his place in life.

"It's typical Brighouse in the way he writes about the dignity of the working classes," says Rutter. "The script has a real northern wit running through the passion, pride, prejudice and principles."

As the play has toured various venues across Yorkshire, the audience has been invited to take part in a 100 Years of Football event, sharing their own memories of the game through the decades.

"We have heard some wonderful anecdotes," says Rutter. "Like the Leeds United supporter who remembered the days where you sat in specific sections of the ground depending on where you lived and how you moved seats as you got older, settled down and had a family."

Rutter is aware of the dangers of wallowing in the nostalgia of halcyon days which might never have existed, but when it comes to both football and theatre he remains very much a traditionalist. In The Game, which stars Phil Rowson as Metherell and Wendi Peters, best-known for playing Coronation Street's Cilla Battersby Brown, as his mother, there is no lavish set or expensive lighting rigs.

"I'm not one who screams for goal-line technology and I don't like the way referees have become enemy number one," he says. "It's the same with plays, I like the fact that there are people out there who use wizardry to bring a production to life. There's a place for that, but it's not for me."

The Game, York Theatre Royal, November 23-27. 01904 623568, www.yorktheatreroyal.co.uk

Life of Harold Brighouse

Harold Brighouse was born in 1882 in Eccles, Lancashire, the son of a cotton spinner.

Initially working at his father's firm, he soon became obsessed with theatre and began to write his own plays.

He was taken under the wing of Annie Horniman, who opened Manchester's Gaiety Theatre in 1908, and his prolific career began.

While best known for Hobson's Choice, he also wrote 14 other plays, various novels and contributed book reviews, essays and short stories to the Manchester Guardian,

He died in London on July 25, 1958 on the eve of his 76th birthday.