It speaks volumes about the ongoing maturation of football culture that someone could now be writing plays about it.

In truth, this is not really a play. It’s more a blend of monologue and stand up with occasional football chants and audience participation – telling the story of Williams’s social experiment in 2012/13 when he bought a season ticket for the inaugural Western Sydney Wanderers season, and attended every match wearing his Sydney FC shirt, accessorised by his Western Sydney season ticket and lanyard.

I have to say from the start – as a Mariners fan – I probably wouldn’t have attended this play except for two reasons: there was a very good review in The Australian; and when I read the review, I mistakenly thought the play had been written by David WilliamSON.

‘Really!’ I thought, ‘…a play about football by David Williamson? Describing his own experiences as a fan?’

I had no idea David Williamson was a football fan, but he had written The Club, so was clearly very into sport. It made a weird kind of sense and the review talked about the play’s exploration of the tribalism of football from the different parts of Sydney.

It seemed like the kind of thing David Williamson might do. I was vaguely perplexed by the small venue and short season for a such a giant of Australian theatre, but…maybe it was an experimental thing? In any case, I had to see it.

I discovered my mistake about an hour before the show, and laughed heartily at my own stupidity – something I do a lot these days. Never mind, I’d already bought the tickets and was scoffing into pre-play pizza and vino. It’s still a good night out, even if we had to get back to the Coast afterwards…on a school night.

It was an intimate little venue where 40 people made the room feel quite full. The performance commenced with an explanation of the terms and concepts for any non-football fans in the audience. This, I thought, spoiled the dramaturgical spell a little as when you break the fourth wall and keep it broken, you don’t really have a play – you have a conversation – but as I said to the writer/actor at the time, it would have been so helpful if we’d had this kind of pre-play explanation before seeing Waiting for Godot.

As for the play itself, Williams recounts his own conversion to football fandom and developing fascination with Sydney FC. He flirts with the idea of converting to the Wanderers (as many did) when they came into the competition, not least because he grew up in Western Sydney and very much identifies with the area (however it be physically or psycho-socially defined).

That’s why he did start attending Wanderers matches (as well as Sydney FC matches), because he enjoys football and loves the theatre – especially the theatre of the crowd. But wearing a Sydney shirt to Wanderers games turned him into a kind of prop comic.

Some humorous examples of banter were given, walking to and from games amid the Red and Black Bloc, and a prevailing theme of the show was the friendliness of the banter rather than the all-pervading violence portrayed in the media – especially the tabloid press.

The second half of the show was partly a call to arms to alert those who are fans to the injustices perpetrated against other fans by the press and even by the FFA (in the Buckley era), for example, employing the likes of Hatamoto to spy on fans and find reasons to bar them from games without appeal.

It was also partly an exploration of the prevailing emotions felt by hard core fans: hope and disappointment, culminating in the Farina Out campaign which so coloured the 2012/13 season for Sydney FC.

Mind you, the disappointment theme could not have been worse timed given the record-breaking season Sydney have just had but, those of us who are long-term fans understood exactly where he was coming from.

In the end, this was a very ambitious play and I’m not entirely sure Williams (not Williamson) achieved exactly what he set out to achieve but I was certainly amused and entertained and it was very interesting to hear Sydney FC and Wanderers songs being sung in such an alien context.

I think the play would have been improved by a little more theatricality and less interaction with the audience, but it was a pretty good effort to deal with such unlikely material in theatre and to keep even the non-football fans interested.

Adrian’s latest book Political Football: Lawrie McKinna’s Dangerous Truth is in the shops right now or available through Booktopia. Adrian also wrote Mr Cleansheets.