Tom Wells' comic drama about a group of misfits playing Sunday league football was inspired by his love of the underdog.

The young writer may be a flop when it comes to the football pitch but if he keeps producing such sharp, genuinely funny feel-good plays he'll soon be among theatre's top dogs.

This is one huge embrace of a play - theatre's equivalent of a big bowl of comfort food, but without the calories of many a more emotionally manipulative work.

James Grieve's production feels as slick and well-drilled as a Premier League outfit, while retaining something of the amateur, grass roots atmosphere of the ramshackle team it celebrates.

Combative bar manager Viv has assembled a team of friends big in heart, but short on skill in an attempt to win the local gay and lesbian five-a-side league and begin her pub's trophy collection.

We follow them through the ups and downs of their turbulent first season as they celebrate and commiserate after each of their six matches.

Joe is struggling to get his life back on track after the death of his wife and Viv's sister, while Viv is so focused she's got no time for grief.

Bearded busker Geoff refuses to remove the woolly hat hiding the scars of a homophobic assault as he seeks the perfect song for Hull Pride.

But the play revolves around the budding romance between painfully shy librarian Luke and the commitment-phobic aspiring football coach Danny.

Their scrapes and strains on the pitch (none apparently inflicted by Tranny Utd's stilettos) are nothing compared with their emotional bumps and bruises off it.

But they're as much of a family unit as the cast of Wells' last play at the Bush, the equally heart-warming The Kitchen Sink, and they're always ready to patch one another up.

Wells' great talent lies in making life somehow seem so simple, without being in any way reductive or smoothing the bumps we all experience. There's a genuine affection for his characters and for his home city of Hull.

He also has an uncanny knack for squeezing unexpected poetry from the most mundane of sources, from Luke's diary of porridge-based disasters to the Hull fish trail.

Andy Rush, as Geoff, and Philip Duguid-McQuillan, who plays Luke, steal most of the laughs but the whole cast gets the pitch just right.

There's one minor false note at the very end but, as football analogies go, that's a consolation goal in a thumping victory of a play.