Barry Hall is standing at the bar of the Union Club Hotel in Fitzroy when a scrawny man tries to pick a fight. Yes, it's that Barry Hall, former St Kilda, Sydney and Footscray man-mountain Barry Hall, a man famous for his goal-kicking prowess and infamous for his tendency to throw an ill-advised punch or two.

This time, though, there is no brain snap. "Hang on. The last thing I want is trouble," Hall says to the little man. "And just for the record, violence is never the answer."

The exchange is from the latest episode of Four Quarters, a footy-based web comedy series about four mates who meet each Monday in their local. The rough script of each episode is rewritten each Sunday night after the weekend's games, finished about 5am and delivered to the set in time for a directors' meeting at 6. Filming takes up the rest of Monday and by Tuesday afternoon the episode is uploaded to YouTube.

And if all goes according to plan, versions of this modest exercise in fast fiction could soon be popping up all over the world.

The series is the brainchild of Aidan O'Bryan, a partner in the West Australian production house WBMC (among their other credits is Son of a Gun, the forthcoming crime thriller starring Ewan McGregor).

"Web content is easy to get up," says O'Bryan. "What's difficult is getting it seen."

To date, Four Quarters has attracted a modest audience, between 5000 and 10,000 views for each of its eight episodes.

"The one thing we have done is prove the process," O'Bryan says. "It's really hard work but we're turning around something that's high quality."

He says Fox Footy has expressed interest in running the series next season. A company in Denmark has inquired about making a version featuring handball in place of footy. There's some interest in adapting an ice hockey version for the North American market, too.

Mike Cowap, investment manager at Screen Australia, which has invested about $350,000 in the series, says that while the audience numbers have been a bit softer than the agency would have liked, Four Quarters ranks as a success in other respects.

"It's a pretty innovative format to integrate such up-to-the-minute topicality, and I think the team have proved that it's possible to introduce that high-pressure element and still tell a coherent story," he says.

"They could now easily apply the format to any sport or time-critical event - as I know they always intended to - and I think the show makes for a very persuasive pitch tool to take to other sources of finance."

Screen Australia has about $3.5 million a year to invest in web-based or multimedia content, and sees this as a potential area for engagement with the broader audience that seems so resistant to seeing Australian movies. It also sees it as a cheap way of developing talent and ideas for possible upscaling to TV or film projects.

"YouTube is a great platform for testing and refining an idea in public," says Cowap, who notes the imminent arrival of YouTube sensations the Bondi Hipsters on ABC2 with their comedy show #7DaysLater.

Meanwhile, back at the pub - incidentally, the same one used by the producers of Offspring - Barry Hall has finished his cameo. How was it? I ask.

"It was good," he says in that gruff baritone of a voice that has lately been wheeled out for the odd spot of touchline commentary on the telly. "I haven't done much acting in my time but they made me look good."

He admits to having had his reservations when first approached. "I wondered if this is going to be one of those things where you think in five years' time, 'Gee I wish I hadn't done that'. I think it'll be all right."

Speaking of regrets, how about that violence line, Baz?

"Yeah," he says, a little sheepishly. "Well, that's dead true."

Watch Four Quarters at youtube.com/user/4QuartersAFL