Clearing the Pack

by Michael Panckridge

  It was getting pretty dark as I strolled over to our car. Dad was standing chatting to a few other parents, but I thought I recognised a familiar figure halfway round the oval.

  ‘Hey, Jack!’ I called.

  The figure kept on walking away from me. ‘Jack! It’s me, Mitchell!’

  There was no way he could have missed it, but he made no sign of hearing me. I turned back to the car.

  The next morning the usual crowd surrounded the noticeboard. This time there was a ladder, along with the results of all the games that had been played so far.

  The Wetherhoods were breathing down our necks. They had a massive percentage. It was all down to who won the last game between us.

  P

  W

  L

  For

  Ag

  %

  Pts

  Sandhurst

  2

  2

  0

  174

  130

  133.8

  8

  Wetherhoods

  2

  1

  1

  158

  80

  197.5

  4

  Ascot

  2

  1

  1

  120

  118

  101.7

  4

  Scornly

  2

  0

  2

  90

  214

  42.1

  0

  The netball ladder was also there for all to see. It was kind of in reverse; we were doing the heavy breathing with a higher percentage.

  P

  W

  L

  For

  Ag

  %

  Pts

  Hoods

  2

  2

  0

  33

  29

  113.8

  8

  Sandhurst

  2

  1

  1

  36

  28

  128.6

  4

  Ascot

  2

  1

  1

  33

  31

  106.5

  4

  Scornly

  2

  0

  2

  24

  38

  63.2

  0

  There was still no sign of Jack. At recess I nabbed Bryce and got him to ring Jack’s home on his mobile. There was no answer. We tried throughout the day, but each time it just rang out.

  I finally got to tell Bryce, Bubba and Luci about Fisk knowing about the secret room in the library.

  ‘But how?’ asked Luci.

  ‘He must have been within earshot when we were talking,’ Bryce suggested.

  ‘But surely we would have noticed him?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah, unless he was actually in the secret room,’ Bubba said, laughing. He kept on laughing at his own little joke, but no one else laughed. Especially not Bryce. Finally Bubba realised that the funny moment had passed.

  ‘Not a bad suggestion, eh guys?’ he said, suddenly serious.

  It was Monday of the last week of the Legend of Football and we still hadn’t heard anything about Jack. I’d even asked Mrs Lee and Mr T but neither of them could (or would) give me a direct answer. I was just amazed that Jack hadn’t been in touch. Even a quick email to school. But we’d heard nothing now for a week.

  Today was the quiz, and Tuesday was our last training session. On Wednesday we had the skills test and on Thursday our final game, which was the crunch match against the Wetherhoods. I was already starting to look ahead to Thursday and getting a bit nervous about the game. I’d heard some pretty amazing things about their players. Spooky, actually. Sort of like the name the kids from the school on Wetherhood Street were given: The Hoods.

  All the kids going for the Legend of Football piled into the library at ten o’clock for the quiz.

  Mr T had set up an area of the library with footy posters and stuff. Beside each laptop stood a little team flag. Sometimes there were two or even more of a particular team. There was only one Hawks flag, though, and I sat down at this table.

  I noticed Fisk sitting at a Collingwood laptop. Mazis went to a Crows one and Paisley took the only Eagles emblem that I could see.

  On the screen was a picture of a huge red Sherrin footy, which turned out to be a button that got us into the quiz. All the instructions were on-screen. The next screen showed a list of the eighteen AFL club names. I clicked on Hawthorn and inside was a folder with my name beneath it. Cool!

  I clicked the ‘back’ button and clicked on Geelong. There were three folders which must have meant that three students had chosen Geelong.

  I typed in my password after clicking on my folder again and a window opened with the first section of the quiz – the rules of footy.

  I looked up, wondering what everyone else was doing. The same as me, it looked like. Mr T had hardly said a word since we’d arrived.

  Once again, just like the cricket and tennis, the quiz was full of colour and pictures and sounds. It was almost like a computer game. I’d studied pretty hard about the 2015 season and I knew heaps about Hawthorn.

  But Mr T obviously didn’t want too many kids getting perfect scores. There were some tricky questions, but most were fair.

  I met up with Luci outside the canteen at lunchtime.

  ‘How was the netball quiz?’ I asked her.

  ‘Great,’ she replied.

  ‘Was it all on laptops, you know, with pictures and stuff?’

  ‘Yep, it was awesome. Well, for a test, anyway!’

  Bubba, Bryce and I wandered down to the noticeboard to see if there was any info about the skills session coming up. And there was. We had been paired off so that there would be a mini competition for each pair. By some amazing stroke of good fortune, I had been paired up with Fisk (joke!). The list of skills that would be tested was up as well.

  1. Long kicking

  2. Kicking on the run

  3. Handballing

  4. Goal scoring

  5. Bouncing the ball

  6. Marking

  ‘How did they do it last year, Bubba?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, it was in pairs, I think. And they just scored you for each of the things, I think.’

  ‘Okay.’ It wasn’t any clearer, but I think Bubba’s memory was in overdrive. I’d find out soon enough.

  The Tuesday training session was legendary. Even the Bubbaman was putting in. All the hassles with Jack and Fisk were forgotten for an hour and a half as Mr T worked us through drills and games.

  You could tell that Fisk lived and breathed this particular sport. Footy must be his favourite. I sensed that he genuinely felt that he could be this year’s Legend of Football. He was so focused during training and games.

  Once, he even used my name as he ran out to accept a pass from me. There was almost a grunt of approval from him as the ball thumped into his chest.

  Bryce had asked us to meet him in the library after training. Luci and Becky were already there when Bubba and I arrived.

  ‘Now tell me, where exactly did the noise come from?’ Bryce asked. We were vague, but agreed finally on a couple of metres of shelving where the sports books were.

  ‘Okay, let’s get going, people.’

  Bryce started hauling books off the shelves. We had soon exposed the wood panelling behind the shelving.

  ‘Mitch, look at this!’

  We all jumped at Bubba’s excited voice. ‘What?’

  ‘It says here that the Bulldogs –’

  Bubba had his nose in a footy book.

  ‘Not now, Bubba,’ Becky said, rolling her eyes.

  Bryce was studying the wooden panels, feeling them over with his fingers.

  ‘There’s got to be some catch – something.’ He sounded exasperated.

  ‘What? You reckon you’re going to discover some secr
et sliding door like in a film?’ scoffed Luci.

  ‘Yes,’ Bryce answered simply.

  ‘Here, in the library, in our school?’ she continued.

  ‘Yes.’ Bryce looked at her.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because that’s the only thing that makes sense,’ said Bryce.

  ‘It’s almost closing time,’ called Miss Javros, the librarian. ‘Isn’t the footy quiz over?’

  She wandered down to where five kids sat with a pile of books around them. Miss Javros was pretty chilled in most situations. Not much seemed to faze her.

  ‘You kids want to check those books out at the front desk, then?’

  ‘Actually, we were just looking for something,’ said Bubba, cool in a crisis.

  ‘Really? Well, you’re not the first to be scrounging around this end of the library,’ said Miss Javros. ‘Come along.’

  Bryce was staring at Miss Javros. And Miss Javros seemed to be making up her mind about something.

  ‘Well,’ she said at last, ‘I suppose if anyone can work it out, our friend Bryce Flavel can.’ She walked away.

  ‘Come on, let’s clean up these books,’ said Bryce. He was looking excited.

  A moment later Miss Javros returned, holding a blue display folder. We watched her closely. She pulled out a plastic pocket from the folder and passed it over to Bryce.

  ‘I sensed that it was special,’ said Miss Javros, ‘but had no idea why. Actually, I had forgotten about it until I saw the back of those shelves again. That’s where I found it, when we were doing our annual stocktake last year. Anyway, let’s put these books back now, shall we?’

  Inside the plastic pocket was a neat, yellow piece of paper with numbers on it. We pored over it. It didn’t look that special to me, but Bryce was handling it like it was some ancient Egyptian scroll.

  ‘These numbers have got to mean something,’ he said, shaking his head. I think he sensed my mind was elsewhere. It was, after all, the middle of the Legend of Football week.

  ‘Leave it with me, okay people?’

  For the skills session, the oval was a sea of bright orange cones, footballs, and teachers. My group started with the ball bouncing. We had to run 100 metres in under 30 seconds, which was no problem, but we also had to bounce the ball as many times as we could. The faster we went, the better. The more times we could bounce the ball, the better.

  We ran off in pairs. I just concentrated on my own job, trying to ignore Fisk a few metres to my right. I beat him across the line, just. Bryce later told me I had bounced the ball more times than Fisk had, too. It was a good start.

  Next was marking. We both seemed to go pretty well. Fisk thrashed me in the long kicking, though. He must have belted the first four of his five kicks over 50 metres. I tried to be relaxed and easy in my approach and managed some long drop-punts.

  Fisk took a gamble with his last kick and went for a torpedo. He nailed it. It flew off his boot and sailed in a monstrous arc over the cones. The teacher had to jog back ten paces to mark where it landed.

  Kicking on the run didn’t need power so much as accuracy. Again, we were well matched. We had to run at pretty much full pace and hit a still target, a slow-moving person, then someone running fast.

  We got three shots at each level and we had to alternate the foot we kicked with, first with the right, then with the left.

  Teachers marked scores on their clipboards. And like the previous sports, there were plenty of kids watching, in small groups or in class groups.

  The handballing was set up in front of a board that looked like an archery target. We got ten points for handballing the football through a hole in the middle of the target. If we hit the zone around the hole we got seven points, and then with each section further from the hole we lost another two points.

  We got five shots with each hand.

  I started with my right hand, Fisk with his left. After five shots he had scored 44 – with his wrong hand! I had got four ‘sevens’ and a ‘ten’ for a total of 38, and that was with my good hand. He strolled back in and hit four bullseyes and a ‘seven’ which put his total up to 91.

  I heard the teacher mention something about a school record as I walked up for my five shots. I had to put Fisk out of my mind. Even with five bullseyes, I couldn’t beat him.

  But it might get me close to the maximum points for the handballing.

  I ended up with only two ‘tens’ and three ‘sevens’.

  Fisk hadn’t said a word all the time we’d been out there. Once again, he was totally focused. I knew the only way to rattle him was to do something better than him. I also knew that my best chance for that was coming up – the goal kicking.

  It was a game called Sevens, because there were seven different positions or angles that we had to kick goals from. We got two shots at goal from each angle. And then we repeated the whole sequence again. Mr T had worked it out really well. At the end of all our shots, which was 28 shots all up, our score looked like a real footy score.

  There were two shots at a 90 degree angle from the boundary line. There was hardly any ‘daylight’ between the goalposts. These were the toughest kicks. The next two shots were from about 70 degrees. Then two more from 45 degrees. Then the easiest shots, from directly in front of goals. There was one other interesting rule. If you hit the goal post, you scored three points, half the value of a goal.

  Fisk and I didn’t even score on our first shot each, but after that we went goal for goal.

  A little crowd had gathered. I was wondering whether there would be any distractions like we got during The Wall at tennis. But I don’t think I would have noticed, even if there had been. By the time we had got halfway through, Fisk was on 11.2.68, and I wasn’t far behind on 10.3.63. We’d scored with every kick but our first.

  I started the second half with two goals from the ‘impossible’ 90 degrees angle. Fisk sure didn’t look pleased with that. Nor with the big crowd who were cheering and whistling as Mr T, decked out in a goal umpire’s white coat, signalled the goals.

  Fisk followed up with a goal and a poster. I’d only gained three points. Again we went goal for goal through the next few sets. The crowd at our end was getting larger as word spread that there was a huge shoot-out down at the far goals.

  By the time we had got to the final two kicks, there were still only a couple of points separating us. I was on the toughest side for a right footer. You couldn’t run around to improve your angle. I had only ever kicked goals from here by either kicking a reverse boomerang (very tricky), or spiralling through a fast, flat torpedo.

  That’s the kick I went for. Unfortunately it sailed across the face of the goals and only just managed to score a point.

  ‘You’re gone now, Grady,’ Fisk hissed into my ear, bouncing a ball a few metres behind me. I held the ball longways across my body, this time going for the reverse boomerang. It came off my boot beautifully, but was taking ages to swing in.

  Mr T jogged away from me to the far goalpost, all the time looking up at the footy that was slowly bending back. It was heading straight over the post, but then dipped and appeared to graze the top of the post. The sigh from the crowd told me the news. It was a three-pointer.

  Still, Fisk would have to score a goal or a three-pointer to beat me.

  About ten seconds later he did. He thumped a flat torpedo that curled around the near goalpost like it had a remote control. He didn’t score with his next kick, but he didn’t need to. He’d already won.

  Later, Luci told me all about what the netballers had to do. She said it was the most punishing work out she’d ever experienced. The focus had been on showing your skills but making you more and more tired with heaps of short sprints and sit ups spread between catching, passing and shooting games.

  There was plenty of talk around the school about the game against the Wetherhoods. The rumour was that Mr T was telling (not asking) every teacher to bring their class out to support the school football team. After all, it wasn’t oft
en that Sandhurst had a chance to win the Inter-School Football Trophy.

  Mr T and Miss Connelly worked it so that the main netball game wouldn’t be played at the same time as the football match. They sure were gunning for maximum crowds.

  The crowd was six or seven deep at the netball. I didn’t see Bryce anywhere, but that wasn’t surprising given the number of kids milling about. There were barbecues and a couple of tents set up selling drinks and hot food for all the visitors. I’m sure Mr Fisk was responsible for a good proportion of the sausages already sizzling.

  The netball game against the Wetherhoods gave me my first look at the sort of kids we would be playing. If the female version of the Hoods was anything to go by, it was going to be a spiteful and tough game.

  There were plenty of cries and falls and scraped knees as the Sandhurst netball team took the full force of the Wetherhoods’ dodgy tactics.

  At one stage in the third quarter, I managed to catch Luci’s eye. I clenched my fist – not as in, ‘Hey Luci, go the knuckle’, but more, ‘Stay determined, stay strong’. She did. She played brilliantly. Her passes were always bang on target and she was frustrating the player she was against.

  With only a few minutes to go, and with Sandhurst behind by two goals, she intercepted a pass near the centre of the court and fired off a bullet-like pass to Mia, who scored.

  The Wetherhoods had the next centre pass, but again Luci, who was playing with a GA on her back, got a hand to the ball and tapped it to Talia. She broke back and Talia looped the ball to her. Luci got the ball to Mia and then raced in under the ring. The Wetherhoods goalkeeper pushed her out and Luci went flying.

  There were groans and cries from everywhere. Even Bubba was shouting at this enormous Hood with a GD on her back, standing there defiantly with her hands on her hips.

  Luci bounced back up, though, took the ball from the umpire and calmly popped it through the ring.

  There must have been only seconds left. The place was rocking. Everyone was screaming for one more goal. And the girls delivered. Again, Mia, Luci and this time Becky combined without anyone else getting a touch.