THE TEAM assembles. Everything has been leading up to this. Years of training. Months of practice.

They gather around their leader, ready to receive final morsels of instruction and motivation. For the next few hours, they're united in a singular purpose with a clear plan in mind. They know things can go wrong, and they're ready for whatever is thrown at them.

In a few moments, they'll head out under the bright lights and in front of thousands of spectators. The stage is set. Literally.

While it sounds like the spine-tingling few seconds before a footy game, it also applies to the moments before the curtain raises for a theatre performance.

This crossover between footy and theatre is explored in the Melbourne Theatre Company's '37', which opens on Friday night for a second run following a sold-out season in 2024.

Named for Adam Goodes' playing number and set in the era of the Sydney great's war cry, '37' tells the story of a down-on-their-luck country football team whose premiership prospects are boosted by the arrival of two Indigenous players.

The players are prodigiously talented but their presence at the club prompts a complex racial reckoning amid the players and coaches.

Goodes himself gave the production his blessing, and for some members of the cast, it's a once in a lifetime opportunity to combine their two passions.

"We both loved the idea of mixing two of our favourite things in the world, sports and theatre," director and Noongar man Isaac Drandic said of writer Nathan Maynard's script.

"Both football and theatre are hugely collaborative. It takes an entire team to be successful.

"You've got to train well in football, you've got to train hard, you've got to look at different dynamics that exist between the players, you've got to get everyone on the same game plan. And that's exactly the same job I have as director.

"So there are so many parallels between sports, AFL in particular, and theatre."

Veteran actor Syd Brisbane, who plays the team's coach, turned to some footy greats to inspire his performance.

"I've been an AFL member since 1998, so I follow football very closely. I go to Essendon games, but I follow the whole sport," Brisbane said.

"The guy who wrote this play, Nathan Maynard, he's actually a mad Hawks supporter but he really knows his football. So the speeches I get to give are just a joy.

"Knowing some of the history and the great speeches, like John Kennedy and Ron Barassi, that helps with the passion and the nuance and the light and shade that you can give to a coach's speech."

The DNA of football runs right throughout the performance, and Goodes' legacy looms large.

It asks the question; when push comes to shove, do you stand up for your beliefs?

"Nathan is using the Adam Goodes story and AFL football as a vehicle to explore relations between black and white Australia today, even though it's set back in 2014-15, during those moments when Goodesy did the war dance (in a match against Carlton at the SCG," Brisbane said.

"[The play] asks a pretty hard question: 'Where do you stand now?'. You might talk a good talk, but when it when push comes to shove - and this is a moment in the play for my character, the coach - what is he willing to sacrifice to achieve his ambition?

"Is he willing to stand strong with the black community, or will he only stand up to a point to where it suits his agenda? And then if it doesn't suit his agenda anymore, is (he) willing to push them under the bus?

"Morally, where do you stand? Are you willing to possibly lose the grand final because of your morals?

"You can extrapolate that into the wider society and what's going on now; how do you reconcile the vote for the Voice to Parliament with people in your own household that perhaps voted ‘no’? How do you move on with life when you've got to interact with people who you don't agree with?

"There's so many laugh-out-loud belly laugh (moments) and yet it also ... moves you to tears, it's so hard hitting."

Drandic pointed to the social dynamic of a country football club being a microcosm of Australian society and used that to explore racial attitudes and biases.

"I've played a lot of footy growing up, and been a big fan of football for a long time so I do understand the mechanics and the culture of football clubs. I have an understanding of the sort of shenanigans that exist when you get a bunch of boys together and it can be quite squeamish, it can be really funny, it can be really lovely, and it can be quite odd," Drandic said.

"Setting the play around that time and having the backdrop of what happened - the polarisation that happened on a national level - when Adam Goodes did the war cry dance was a really important opportunity for us to make this work important and to make it meaningful.

"What Goodes has been able to do is as important as the moment Nicky Winmar lifted his jumper and pointed to his skin, saying 'yes, I'm black, and I'm proud'. It will go down as one of the most important moments in not in just our sporting history, but our national history, because what he was fighting for was more than just within his own industry of sports. It reached everybody in the country and put something that's really important back onto the agenda.

"What Nathan's done really, really well is he's he set it within this football club, and each of these characters represent Australia and the scale of racism. Because racism comes in lots of different forms, it can be really quite subtle. It can be sort of micro-aggressions; some racism can be that casual that it goes over people's heads. Some can be just blatant, out-and-out and in your face.

"So what Nathan's been able to do is to give a really balanced view of the scale of racism that exists in Australia without banging us over the head with his own commentary, but allowing the audience to do the work and to get some further insights into what that casual racism looks like. Even how maybe I might have been part of that when I just laughed something off."

In addition to directing, Drandic co-choreographed the production, with the ancient game of Marngrook informing much of his choreography.

"There's quite a strong visual correlation between the way that Aboriginal people played the game Marngrook and we still see those signatures now when we watch the AFL. Especially when we're looking at players like Liam Ryan who are still taking those high flying marks, and the sort of the magic that some of these Aboriginal players are able to produce consistently at the highest level. These are classic signatures of the old-school game Marngrook," Drandic said.

"Obviously, the football oval is a lot bigger than [the stage] so I knew from early on that I had to sort of abstract the movement. One of the ways that I did that was Nathan and I talked about the idea of introducing a Marngrook thread in the storyline so that we were able to give a nod to Marngrook as the original game in which AFL was derived from. But then I was able to, as the choreographer, look at traditional Aboriginal movement and dance and I could fuse that into the modern-day game of AFL football movement."

Players from the Western Bulldogs, North Melbourne, St Kilda and Gold Coast have already seen the play in its first run, with St Kilda's Indigenous players meeting the cast after the performance.

"A lot of us hadn't seen much live theatre before and loved it, (It) was awesome to learn more about the Marngrook history," Saints gun Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera told AFL.com.au.

The cast also toured North Melbourne's Arden St facility after the club's AFLW side and coach came to see the show.

"We were all joking that's why they won the flag!" Brisbane said.

"The show is unique because it appeals to all ages and backgrounds, non-theatre-goers, non-footy fans."

37 begins previews on Friday 24th January at Southbank Theatre. Tickets via mtc.com.au.