York City's dreams of FA Cup glory will flicker once more tomorrow when they meet Carlisle in the, er, fourth qualifying round.

Ah, the magic of the oldest cup competition in the world. It hits the nostrils like the first whiff of half-time Bovril, and in Chris Chibnall's new play Gaffer!, it is the turn of Coca Cola League Two relegation fodder Northbridge Town to dream perchance of FA Cup success against the legendary Liverpool in the third round.

The Sky cameras will be there, music to the ears of Northbridge's new chairman, a former record producer, who has set a 100-day timetable for improvement and modernisation in John Batchelor style. How will old-fashioned manager George the Gaffer handle the pressure to re-brand himself?

Directed by Gareth Machin, artistic director of the Southwark Playhouse in London, Chibnall's play is a one-man show starring Geordie actor Deka Walmsley.

"I worked with Chris four or five years ago, directing his play Clear at the Bristol Old Vic," says Gareth. "He gave me the script for Gaffer!, which had its earliest incarnation in a dingy room above a noisy London pub in the great tradition of cutting-edge theatre, and I loved it. I was just looking for another opportunity to do it, and so it had been in a desk drawer waiting for another run out."

Once Gareth took up his post at Southwark in January and forged links with York Theatre Royal to facilitate the new production's rehearsals at the Walmgate rehearsal rooms in York, Gaffer! was re-born.

Deka came on board six weeks before those rehearsals began.

"My agent said 'there's an audition for a one-man play about football. How about it?' I love my job, I love my football - I'm a Newcastle fan - so naturally I went for it."

In the role of George, he conjures up all the other characters that pepper Chibnall's tale, as if he were telling stories in a pub.

"It's as exciting as it's terrifying to do this show. It's like a double-edged sword. I don't know many actors who would want to do a one-man show with all these lines," Deka says. "But that's the joy of it. If I could just walk on and do it, what would be the pleasure in that? The question is: can I create an 80-year-old man, a 17-year-old boy, the assistant manager...well, can I?"

Deka has not based his characterisation on one particular manager. "Loads of managers have come under discussion. You can't do an impersonation of any one manager but I've watched football for years and years and you just get a feeling for what makes a great traditional English manager," he says.

"The other thing is, it's so well written you'd have to be an idiot to miss the tone of the character."

George is a manager hewn from the football lore that prevailed before the Premiership era of Arsene Wenger and Jose Mourinho.

"What the play is about is how the game has been transformed in the last 20 years, and George is struggling to keep up with the changes," says Gareth. "He tries, but he struggles in the way he handles the press and interacts with his players, because he's rooted in an earlier time."

Deka takes up the point. "You find him thinking 'why won't the players just take it? If it was good enough for me, why isn't it good enough for them?' He thinks the basic principles of football are the same and can't understand why those basic instincts of loyalty, honesty and integrity have gone from the game," he says.

Bubbling away in the play is the theme of discrimination in football, in this case homophobia in the macho environment of the dressing room. "If you have any 'weakness' of any kind, the pressures of the game mean you have to hide that in order to survive," says Gareth.

"The play tackles broader issues to do with masculinity, and in football there's only one kind of masculinity that's acceptable.

"Now clubs are signing boys at seven and eight for coaching, and if you live in an entirely male environment, the attitudes you face will mould you...the way the players treat women, with roasting at one end of the scale. So it's partly a play about what it is to be a man today."

Gaffer!, presented by Southwark Playhouse in association with York Theatre Royal, The Studio, York Theatre Royal, November 3 to 27. Box office: 01904 623568.

Updated: 15:32 Thursday, October 28, 2004