The Final Winter

More than just a movie about rugby league, The Final Winter is one of the better Australian films I've seen in recent years.

To Mick `Grub' Henderson (Matt Nable) rugby league is life and when he is faced with the reality that his career is ending he's left wondering what he's going to do.

And it doesn't matter that he has a wife and two daughters because most of the time he doesn't see them, just the game and how he's devoted his life to it. Added to his woes is the news that his brother Trent (Nathaniel Dean) has just been signed to the club he's devoted his life to. Mick and Trent rarely see eye to eye, stemming from when Mick was forced into the role of provider and surrogate father for his family.

As Trent so touchingly points out `I didn't want a father, I wanted a brother'.

Set in the 1980s, before rugby league turned professional, The Final Winter is a raw film about loyalty, passion and mateship - and a love of the game based around the Newtown Jets.

Matthew Johns plays coach Jack Cooper and while it's hard no to picture him as the clown, lovable as he is, he has become since retiring from the game, he puts in a solid performance.

Matt Nable also wrote the screenplay and he's captured a unique time in Australian sport beautifully and poignantly. As the film points out, Grub is a fictitious character but the era he represents is not.

The graphic and confronting football scenes add another dimension to the film. It's a side of rugby league that is filtered to us as viewers - we don't feel a lot of the hits the guys put on each other. Admittedly also the game has changed a bit since the 80s and some of the toughness has been diluted from the game (the contested scrums are a prime example and a bit of a hobby horse of mine).

I thought the film was thoroughly believable, engaging and a shade moving. Not bad for a game where a bunch of blokey blokes thunder into each other for 80 minutes a week. Very much a quality Aussie film and an 8 out of 10.