Killer Boots

by Jenkins, Wendy

  ‘I have to have spaghetti before I play.’

  ‘Look, I’m sorry, Greg. If you’d let me know, I would’ve made sure it was here. But this place doesn’t revolve around you and football. There’s some tinned baked beans there — or some cereal. Or some eggs. What about an omelette?’

  ‘No. It has to be spaghetti … I —’

  Brett was standing in the doorway. He had a set of car keys raised between his thumb and forefinger like he was asking a question. ‘What about I nip up to the shop and get some? It doesn’t have to be a huge drama.’

  Chris was silent for about three seconds. She was fighting the impulse to dump all over Greg — she’d just about had him. ‘What a good idea,’ she said finally. ‘And take the boy wonder with you. Then we’ll all calm down when you get back and make out like we’re a normal family.’

  ‘What’s she so spak about?’ Greg asked Brett in the car.

  Brett didn’t miss a beat. ‘Exams, looking after a baby, having teenage sons stay weekends who forget to say what they need. If they speak at all.’

  It was Greg’s turn to go quiet.

  They got the spaghetti at the local deli and were back having breakfast together in ten minutes. Greg was nice to Chris and Chris was nice to Greg. Brett was nice to both of them. Rowan, who had struggled out of bed to join the world, was nice to himself. And Ashley was Ashley.

  ‘Come on guys, let’s get the show on the road.’ Brett was yelling back into the house to get Greg, but mostly Rowan, out to the car with their gear. Greg had been ready for a long time but trying to take his mind off the game by reading comics. He was out and into the car in a flash.

  They waited.

  It was Chris’s turn to yell. ‘Rowan, we’re ready to go. We’ve got to drop you off at the Johnsons’, remember.’ It was an away game and the under fifteens and seventeens were playing at different ovals. Rowan had a lift to his match with a teammate.

  They waited.

  Brett’s turn. ‘Come on, Rowie. We’re going to be late.’

  Rowie? Just when Greg thought the Banana Smoothie was finally getting some cool, he came out with something like that. He’d be calling him ‘Greggy’ next. Still, he was trying, and that trip to get the spaghetti had been beyond the call of duty.

  Rowan came out at a leisurely pace. He slid, still in low gear, into the vacant space in the back seat. ‘Chill out, Bretty, we’ve got plenty of time,’ he said.

  Chris turned around in the front seat. ‘No, you chill out. And you can get yourself organised more quickly next time or get the bus.’

  Whoah.

  Brett started the car and eased it out onto the road. His dorky pigtail didn’t even quiver.

  ‘There’s the Three Stooges again,’ Rowan said. They were driving past a billboard that had a huge image of Toggo, Dazza and Grantley Bell emblazoned across it. All three were looking very serious, but Dazza had a bit of a twinkle in his eye.

  On a patch of plain colour were the words:

  BREATHE LIKE A CHAMPION

  Give Smoking the Boot

  ‘Toggo needs more than fresh air,’ Rowan said. ‘He needs a blood transfusion — from Mel Gibson.’

  The anti-smoking campaign was in full swing. You couldn’t turn on the TV and not see one of the three footballers blush in living colour. It didn’t show up much on Dazza but he wasn’t too bad anyway. Toggo and Grantley, on the other hand, looked like they’d just collided with each other in front of goals and hadn’t come to yet.

  Greg didn’t say anything. Everyone expected Toggo to be perfect. But he was a footballer, not a film star. And pretty soon he’d be proving it to people again.

  RED AND WHITE FOREVER

  Greg always got a buzz when he pulled on a South Fremantle guernsey. The simple red and white was less eye-catching than the Dockers colours, but it had a hundred years of tradition behind it.

  Greg had read everything he could lay his hands on about the old players, especially the ones who’d played for the Fremantle teams. He thought sometimes of the champions who had pulled on the red and white. When he was younger there had been Suma and the Materas. Before them had been Stephen Michael, Cicca and the magic Rioli brothers. And before them, Toddy and Gero.

  He would have loved to see footage of the really old guys play. But TV coverage of football really only started in the sixties.

  The other thing that happened when Greg pulled on the red and white was that he felt part of a team. Seeing twenty other guys with the same colours, and the spectators with their scarves and caps and jackets and beanies, made him feel like he was part of something. It made him feel like he belonged.

  Greg ran out onto the oval and took his place at full-forward. He sized up the kid playing against him. He couldn’t remember him from other games.

  ‘I hear you’re s’posed to be hot shit, Lukin.’

  Oh, hell, Greg thought. Here we go. It’s going to be like this, is it? ‘I dunno about that, my friend,’ he said, stealing a line from Danny French. ‘I like to think I’m cool. Just call me Iceman.’

  That shut the full-back up right off. It was wicked what you could do with your mouth if you gave it half a chance.

  Lakes won the first hit-out and the play went their way for most of the first quarter. It was a hard running, low scoring game. Greg had three touches and managed to kick a goal across his body in the final few minutes. But Lakes were all over Souths and were eleven points up at the end of the first term.

  Greg started the second quarter at half-back and Kyle Bennett took over at full-forward. Kyle was a strong mark and a good lead, but his conversion rate wasn’t as good as Greg’s.

  Greg looked around and checked out the opposition. Lakes had stayed with the same forward line-up — they were hot, so why change? His job was to take them on and try to get some momentum going into Souths’ own forward line.

  Greg was in the middle of the action from the beginning. The Lakes rover grabbed the ball as it ricocheted out of the hit-out, and put in a quick snap towards his centre half-forward. Greg went up for it between two Lakes players. None of them marked. He gathered in the ball as it spilled and handpassed quickly to Nathan who was barrelling through. Nathan’s kick was smothered and the ball came back Greg’s way. The Lakes centre half-forward was first to it this time, and was looking dangerous until Greg tackled him.

  The whistle went. Holding the ball. Free kick. Greg took it quickly, booting a long drop punt towards Kyle who was running on a lead. The ball nailed him on the chest, lace up, about thirty metres out from goal and on a slight angle.

  Kyle shouldn’t have too much trouble with this. Come on Kyle.

  Kyle Bennett lined up and took his kick. It veered a bit to the left, then straightened and speared through the goal posts, no worries. Yay, Kyle.

  Lakes came back straight away with a point, which would have been a goal if Dunny hadn’t managed to get a hand to it on the way through. Then at the seven-minute mark Souths kicked another goal. The scores were even.

  The lead seesawed for the rest of the quarter, with neither side able to get on top. Dunny lived up to his name and was as solid as a tonne of bricks in defence. Greg tied down the centre half-forward who’d been running wild in the first term. He was tied down a bit himself in the process but managed to kick the ball well up into the forward line half-a-dozen times.

  Aaron Skinner, playing in the left pocket, kicked a goal but Lakes quickly equalised. Kyle had three or four clean possessions but couldn’t kick another major score. When the siren went, Souths were just two points ahead.

  The coach really revved them up in the half-time huddle. They ran back to their positions, really firing. The Lakes coach must have been even more full-on. His players seemed to be jumping out of their skins.

  Again it was a hard-running, low scoring quarter. The lead changed three times. At the next break, Lakes were in front by a point.

  The coach was quieter when he talked to Souths at three-quarter time, but
it came out just as forceful. ‘This is it,’ he told them. ‘This is the most important twenty minutes of football we’ve played this year. Win this and we’re in the finals, lose it and we’re out. And we deserve to be in, don’t we?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Nathan yelled.

  ‘Don’t we?’

  ‘Yeah!’ they all yelled.

  ‘Then let’s do it, Fremantle.’

  They broke away from each other and moved to their positions.

  Greg was back at full-forward and itching to get his boot onto the ball for a shot at the posts. He’d had plenty of action in the back line but his only goal was the one he’d kicked in the first quarter.

  Matt Tognolini had borrowed Alison’s old V-dub to drive to the tyre place across the highway. He needed a new spare for the Mustang but he didn’t want to drive his own car. The red convertible had become so recognisable that he might as well have had purple hair. He’d made the mistake of being filmed in the car for a Channel 10 feature. Now, if he wasn’t very careful where he parked, a pack of kids would turn up before he’d even turned off the ignition. The first question they’d ask was ‘How’s the hammy?’ The second was ‘When are you going to be back?’

  Well, he’d hoped to be back weeks ago. He’d been feeling good, and had just started to put pressure on the leg at training, when he’d done his thigh. He couldn’t believe it. And to make it worse, the training session had been crawling with journalists. They had stopped calling him ‘high-flying’ and ‘ace’. Now he was ‘injury prone’ and ‘troubled’.

  As Toggo turned off the highway he passed an oval with the familiar white posts at each end. Then he saw two huddles of players. One of the teams was in red and white.

  He had a surge of the feeling that he’d felt having a kick with that kid months back. What was his name? Greg Lukin. It was something about kids, how keen they were, how they loved the game, that made him feel good. It made him remember. He pulled the car into a space screened by trees and had a closer look.

  These kids would have to be under fifteens. They had that range of sizes and builds from pipsqueaks to bruisers that you got when a group of them were moving from boys to men. He’d been a bit of a runt himself, then really stacked on the height at fourteen.

  That Lukin kid said he played under fifteens … Toggo watched as the huddle broke up. Blobs of red and white burst apart and scattered across the field like someone had exploded a kilo of cheap mince. That coach must be dynamite.

  Toggo watched as the players took up their positions. The boy setting himself up at full-forward could be Greg. Hard to tell from this distance.

  Toggo put on a cap and some shades and slid out of the car and along the far sideline. Yeah, it was him. He’d grown a bit, and looked fit as a racehorse in training.

  Toggo climbed up an embankment away from the string of South supporters. He pulled down his cap and tried to look inconspicuous.

  Greg was feeling good, but he was still hot and sweaty after all the work he’d done.

  ‘Hey, Iceman. You seem to be melting. Getting too hot for you?’

  ‘I hope so, man. When I’m in meltdown I’m really dangerous.’

  Toggo watched as Greg and the opposing full-back shaped up to one another. Greg seemed to be giving the other guy some mouth. Probably trying to psych him out. He grinned. It was a bit like him and Ayre-head.

  As he watched this Lukin kid play — so keen, so energised, so talented — it reminded him of himself at that age. He’d been so proud to pull on the red and white, and practically never took his footy boots off.

  The game was really tight. The teams were evenly matched and neither could get a clear break on the other. A look at the scoreboard told him that it had been that way from the start. A look at the kids told him it must have been a really hard game. Some of poor little sods were dead on their feet. Well, there’d be no letting up at this stage. It was going to go down to the wire. The last good kick would win it.

  Toggo checked his watch. The game must be in the final stages now.

  Just then that gutsy little rover, who’d never stopped running, seemed to lift himself. He laid his boot to the ball at left centre-wing and kicked an absolute screamer towards full-forward. Greg and the full-back went up. The Lukin kid must have gone a metre and a half in the air and took a ride on his opponent’s back. He grabbed the ball with his fingertips and held on. He never let it go, even when he hit the deck with a thump. Mark. The legendary Gero couldn’t have done better. Then the siren went.

  This was the classic situation that full-forwards love and hate. A set kick after the siren that would decide the game. There were only two outcomes: you ended up a hero or a total jerk.

  When Greg got up, the ball was in his hands. The Fremantle camp was going spare. Nathan, who’d just delivered the kick of his life, was jumping up and down like a lunatic.

  Then one of those times happened. Those magic times. Everything slowed. Greg became very focused, very still. He was his body, his boot, the moment. He was a footballer.

  Toggo sucked in his breath. This kid was unreal — he knew, already, about the feeling. About the moment. That all you did was not let the ball not go through the goal posts. He knew what champions knew. He knew what Toggo had forgotten.

  Greg let the kick go.

  And waited.

  Goal.

  After a couple of seconds the colours came back and things started moving at normal speed again.

  The first to reach him was Nathan. Then the rest of the world filled in around that.

  South Fremantle was in the finals. And Gregory Nicholas Lukin was an authentic, genuine, original, A1, no bullshit, no money refunded, hero. Even he believed it.

  MATT TOGNOLINI: SPECIAL AGENT

  Toggo stayed where he was for a while. He was hoping the crowd would break up without anyone checking out the guy on the embankment. A kid in a Dockers jumper — he looked about six years old — came his way, sucking on an icy-pole. Toggo looked down.

  The little tacker stopped and stared. The sunnies and cap didn’t fool him one bit.

  ‘Toggo?’ he asked. ‘Ya are, arncha!’ He turned to yell.

  ‘SSSSSSSSSSHHHHH.’ Toggo put a finger to his lips and motioned the kid in closer. ‘It’s like this, mate. I’m in disguise, right? I’m travelling incognito. I’m a secret agent for the Dockers and I can’t let anyone know I’m here.’

  ‘Oh, Sh — sure.’ The kid was nodding his head, big-eyed.

  ‘You can do me a favour, mate.’

  The kid was still nodding his head. The serious end of his icy-pole plopped onto the ground but he didn’t care. ‘Wh — what?’

  ‘I want you to go down to other end of the field and count the trees. The Dockers are doing special secret research on how oxygen levels affect footy.’

  ‘Sure!’

  The kid took off.

  Matt Tognolini laughed. Oh, Toggo, you can be really wicked sometimes. He started to sing to himself to the tune of an old Beatles song ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’: ‘Toggo in Dis-gui-ise with Sunnee-ee eees’. He was having a really good time.

  There was a knot of people around Greg and the little rover, and all the South supporters seemed really stoked.

  Toggo would have liked to go over and congratulate the kids but it would have made too much of a stir. He pulled his cap down and started back towards the V-dub. He’d gone only about six paces when he was stopped in his tracks by a full-on bellow.

  ‘TOGGO!’ The Special Agent in Charge of Tree Counting was waving his arms and yelling from thirty metres away. ‘Am I s’posed to count the bushes too?’

  Toggo raised an arm and shook his head. Sprung! He was immediately surrounded by a pack of kids. ‘How’s your hammy, Toggo?’ ‘When are you gunna play again?’

  Toggo answered all the questions with a smile. He was, after all, a professional footballer.

  Greg Lukin was standing a little way off. He had still been coming down from what it felt like to
kick that last goal, when some little sprog yelled ‘Toggo’. And there he was, Matt Tognolini. Large as life. He must have seen him kick that goal.

  Toggo looked over at him and nodded. ‘Great goal, Greg.’ He had seen. And he remembered his name.

  Greg moved with the throng to Toggo’s car. He was a bit disappointed that it wasn’t the Mustang.

  ‘I see you’re putting the boots to good use,’ Toggo said to him, over the head of some little warts.

  ‘Yeah.’ He was stuck for words. ‘… They’re my killer boots.’

  ‘Killer boots?’

  ‘They kill the opposition,’ Nathan piped up.

  ‘I could do with a pair like that myself,’ Toggo said, with a grin. ‘Look, guys …’ He was trying to shut the car door without chopping the fingers off any potential Dockers. ‘I gotta go. Good luck in the finals, hey? Keep killin’ ’em, Greg.’

  The Special Agent in Charge of Tree Counting was pressing his nose against the window. Toggo wound it down.

  ‘Nine,’ the kid told him, breathless. ‘But one of ’em’s dead.’

  ‘Just as I suspected. The Eagles are killing off the trees in our area with dieback. Thank you — you’ve been a great help.’

  Greg didn’t understand this at all. Eagles? Dieback? The little sprog had a big smile on his face and was puffing up his chest like he was real important.

  The little sprog would never forget. Over fifty years later he would tell his grandchildren how the legendary Matt Tognolini had once sent him on a secret mission to count trees. And how, ten minutes before that, he’d seen the great Fremantle full-forward of the turn of the century, Greg ‘Lukie’ Lukin, kick a match-winning goal before anyone had ever heard of him.

  ‘Oh yeah, Pop,’ they’d say. ‘Tell us another one.’

  THAT’S OUR BOY

  Chris, Brett and Nick had been sitting side by side to watch Greg play. Nick had pulled his chair up after the first quarter because he wanted someone to talk to about how Greg was playing. (The other parents were focused on their own kids and didn’t want a running commentary on his.)