ATTEMPTED match fixing? Football club on the brink of Receivership? How very 21st century. Except that this play was written 100 years ago.

Brighouse is a name few will recognise instantly, and might guess was the name of a colliery brass band, but author Harold Brighouse was a major and much-performed playwright of the early 20th century. His best-known play, Hobson’s Choice, has been delighting audiences for decades, but many of the others seemed to have sunk without trace – that is until actor/director Barrie Rutter finally tracked down a copy of The Game in a Canadian university archive.

Be glad that he did. Some old plays have an arthritic creak about them and need considerable surgery to the script to make them suitable for a modern audience. The Game however buzzes with life, interesting characters and humour at a pace that never has you looking furtively at your watch. And not a word of the original script needed to be changed to accommodate 21st century tastes.

You don’t need to be a fan of the beautiful game to follow the action. I was inoculated against soccer at a very early age, but was captivated by the clash of dour northern working-class morality with middle-class financial shenanigans. Add the spice of a love affair across the class divide plus a formidable northern matriarch and you have a recipe for laughter and theatrical success.

Well done the Northern Broadsides Theatre Company, and thanks for showing this play the light of day once more.