Five-a-side teams don’t come much more inept than Barely Athletic.

Playing in a queer five-a-side football tournament in Hull in England’s north east, they are the competition’s easy-beats. They even lost to the Drag Team, and they play the game drunk and in stiletto heels.

Written by Tom Wells, whose plays The Kitchen Sink and Folk had excellent Sydney premieres in recent years (courtesy of the Ensemble in North Sydney), Jumpers for Goalposts is a gentle, very likeable play about community and self-acceptance, set entirely in a grimy changing rooms of a council-run football field.

Sam Martin, Isaac Broadbent, Nick Curnow, Emma Louise and Jared Stephenson in Jumpers for Goalposts. Photo © Bob Seary

Viv (Emma Louise) is team captain and coach, a publican and a refugee from the Lesbian Rovers, with whom she had a falling out. Beardy Geoff (Jared Stephenson) is a gay busker. Danny (Isaac Broadbent) – the outwardly competent one among the team – is a student pursuing a fitness career. Luke (Sam Martin) is a shy librarian and can’t kick a ball to save his life, but Danny has a fierce crush on him anyway. The team...