by Rob Childs
“Get a grip, will yer, Anil!” demanded the captain.
“Cool it, man,” Anil snapped back. “You’re no better than me in goal.”
“Maybe not, but I know a kid who is,” Nails sneered, glancing towards the touchline where he spotted Tilly, lying at Simon’s feet between him and a tall, thin, red-haired boy he didn’t recognise.
Simon would already have wandered off to the fence to do a spot of birdwatching, if Ollie had not come up to fuss the dog, swap names and explain that he would be starting at the school on Monday.
“Where did you go before?” asked Simon.
“Princeton Juniors. It’s in the city. Heard of it?”
Simon shook his head.
“You will do soon, if you reach the final, ’cos the Princes are already in it. Won our own semi last week four-nil.”
“So aren’t you cup-tied? Y’know, when you can’t play for two teams in the same competition.”
“Nah, ’fraid I missed all the cup games for one reason or another.”
“So you might be able to play for us instead?”
“Hope so,” Ollie said, grinning. “But you’ve got to win this game first. . .”
The signs of that happening were not good. The Saints remained on top for the rest of the first half, and were unlucky not to increase their lead when a shot hit the crossbar. Anil didn’t even make a move for it.
When the neutral referee blew his whistle for half-time, Simon offered the dog lead to Ollie. “Can you look after Tilly for a few minutes?” he asked.
“Sure,” Ollie said, taking hold of the blue plastic handle. “Where you going?”
Ollie nodded to where the Reds were starting to form a group around Mrs Gregson, who had come onto the pitch near the halfway line.
“I’d better go and join them. I’m supposed to be the sub goalie.”
“Soz – I didn’t realise,” said Ollie.
Simon shrugged. “It’s OK, I can hardly believe it, either.”
“I’m OK, too,” Ollie replied.
Simon looked at him, puzzled. “How d’yer mean?”
Ollie smiled. “Guess you’ll find out soon enough,” he said, stroking Tilly to reassure her. “Go on, then. They might need you.”
“Hope not. I’ve not even played for the school yet.”
“Well, this could be your big chance to be a hero,” Ollie told him.
“I’d rather be a zero.”
Now it was Ollie’s turn to look puzzled.
“I’ll explain later,” said Simon, and trotted off towards the group.
He need not have bothered. He was barely noticed, nobody spoke to him, and he contented himself with sucking on a slice of orange from a tray of refreshments.
It was strange for the players not to have the headteacher giving them instructions about what they should change in the second half. Mr Smith stayed on the touchline and left Mrs Gregson to do the talking, but she did not have much to say.
“Keep trying to do your best,” she finished. “That’s the main thing – win or lose.”
Nails caught Jake’s eye and pulled a face.
“Big help, that is,” the captain muttered under his breath, and then decided to speak up. “C’mon, men, we’re in it to win it, remember.”
Mrs Gregson raised her eyebrows. “It’s how you play that’s more important, Kevin,” she told him, “not the final result.”
Nails sighed, and gave a shrug.
Simon wandered back towards Ollie, who was walking Tilly by the hedge.
“Just in case she wants to water the flowers,” he grinned.
“Yeah, thanks,” said Simon, taking the lead.
“Not needed yet, then?”
“Nah. Not sure they even knew I was there. Waste of time.”
“What’s the master plan for victory?” asked Ollie.
“There isn’t one. Hope for the best, I think she said. I wasn’t really listening.”
“Our teacher at Princeton was a great one for tactics. Reckon he must’ve stayed up all night thinking up new stuff,” Ollie said with a sigh. “Waste of time, mostly. We just went out and scored more goals than the other lot.”
They chuckled together.
One piece of advice from Mrs Gregson that Simon had missed was telling Katie to move about more, so as not to find herself stuck on the touchline.
“Try and lose your marker,” the teacher told her. “Just like you do in netball.”
Katie was certainly enjoying more space in the early part of the second half. She kept popping up in different positions and on one occasion linked up well with Jake, swapping passes before Jake put a shot wide of the target.
Five minutes later, the ball was in the Saints’ net. Katie glided past a couple of weak challenges, fooling the defenders with changes of pace, glanced up to spot that the keeper was off his goal-line, then coolly lobbed the ball over his head.
The pony-tailed winger showed that she was a good gymnast, too. Before anyone could mob her, Katie ran towards the corner flag and performed her well-practised, goal-celebration routine. A cartwheel was followed by a high somersault with a perfect landing in her silver boots, both arms in the air to soak up the crowd’s applause.
“The equaliser!” she screamed.
“What a show-off!” muttered Nails, standing on the halfway line, hands on hips. He preferred to save his energy for the football, instead of running upfield to congratulate the scorer. He still wasn’t feeling all that well.
“C’mon, men!” he cried, clapping his hands to get everyone’s attention as the Reds returned for the re-start. “Long way to go yet. Let’s have another goal.”
Sick and tired
“Reckon you’ve got this game won,” said Ollie, as the Reds pinned the opposition back in their own half. “You’ve got ’em on the run.”
“It’s we, remember, not you,” Simon corrected him, grinning. “You’re one of us now. Well – at least from Monday, you will be.”
“Yeah, right,” he laughed, and shouted across the pitch, “C’mon, Reds, we can do it!”
Emma looked across to the touchline. “Who’s the beanpole next to your kid?”
Nails shrugged. “Dunno.”
“You OK?” she asked. “You’ve gone dead white.”
“Never felt better,” he lied.
The next thing Emma knew, the captain was down on his haunches, being sick in the centre-circle.
“Do you want to go off?” she said.
Nails stood up, wiped his mouth and glared at her.
“What do you think, stupid?” he retorted. “Watch the ball, not me.”
With the ball at the other end of the pitch, few people had seen the incident, but one of those was the headteacher.
“Are you all right, Kevin?” called out Mr Smith.
“Oh, God!” Nails groaned. “Not him as well.” He pretended that he hadn’t heard the question and kept his eyes fixed on what was happening in the opposition penalty area. The Reds’ move had broken down as Katie lost the ball, and the Saints immediately broke away to launch their own swift counter-attack. Nails and Emma soon found themselves outnumbered.
“Get back!” screamed Nails at the other defenders, who had been caught too far upfield. “Stop ’em!”
It was too late. The green shirts swarmed forwards, switching the ball between them and drawing Emma out of position. Nails simply did not have the pace or the energy to fill the gaps and even his attempted trip failed to work. The exposed Anil was given no chance to prevent the goal and seemed to make little effort to do so.
“Looks like I came to the wrong place,” Ollie muttered. “You’ve gone and thrown it away.”
“Oi! It’s back to you again, is it?” said Simon. “What’s happened to we, all of a sudden?”
Ollie shrugged. “Soz, I was just starting to look forward to the final against my old school.”
“Don’t give up yet,” Simon told him. “You don’t know my brothers.”
&n
bsp; Fortunately, it did not take long for the Reds to score again – and there was quite a lot of fortune about their second equaliser. Good luck for them, but bad luck for the poor Saints’ defender, who stuck out a leg to clear Katie’s cross but deflected the ball past his own goalkeeper into the net instead.
With time running out, the visitors seemed to have done enough to earn a 2-2 draw and a replay at home. They probably thought that they deserved it, too, but Nails had other ideas. When Jake won a corner-kick and was preparing to take it quickly by playing the ball short to Katie, Nails shouted to them to wait as he jogged upfield.
“Stay back, Kevin,” cried Mr Smith. “We can’t give away another goal.”
Mrs Gregson did not quite know what advice to give. In truth, she was not that bothered about which side won, so long as it wasn’t a draw. She didn’t really fancy having to organise another game, if the headteacher were still off school the following week.
The looming presence of Nails in the Saints’ penalty box caused some alarm and argument among their defenders, especially as no one was keen to mark the big, sick-stained captain too closely.
“On me ’ead!” Nails shouted to his brother, finding himself in unexpected space.
Jake did his best to oblige, but the keeper was brave enough to come out and try to catch the ball. He also had one eye on Nails, though, perhaps expecting to get clattered in mid-air, and he failed to hold on. The dropped ball caused total panic. There were so many bodies trying to kick and block it at the same time, that the ball ricocheted about the goalmouth as if in a crazy game of table football.
Twice the ball was hacked off the line, once it rebounded from the post but, when it suddenly appeared in front of Nails, he lashed the loose ball home with such force that it ripped the netting from two of the hooks that fixed it onto the crossbar.
“The winner!” he screamed, and collapsed on the ground.
The captain was eventually hauled to his feet, but he was clearly in no fit state to carry on. He was helped from the pitch by the headteacher while Mrs Gregson replaced him with her only remaining substitute.
“You’ll have to play on the wing,” she told Simon. “I can’t swap goalies at this late stage.”
He unzipped his tracksuit to reveal a green top. “I haven’t got a red shirt,” he confessed.
“Put your brother’s on.”
Nails was too weary to complain and tossed his sweaty, smelly shirt to Simon. It made him feel sick as he pulled it over his head.
“Just stay out the way, kid,” Nails warned him. “Don’t mess it up.”
Simon assumed that Nails meant the match rather than the shirt, but the ball did not even come near him in the couple of minutes that were left. He wandered along the touchline, still in his long tracksuit bottoms that he had not had time to take off, and his best moment was when he took the chance to fuss Tilly while the Saints strove desperately for a late equalizer.
“I don’t think she understands what you’re doing there,” Ollie grinned, tickling Tilly behind the ears to comfort the dog.
“That makes two of us,” Simon muttered.
The Saints wasted their last chance when a close-range shot was hit straight at Anil, who managed to cling on to the ball. Then the referee blew the final whistle.
“Wicked!” whooped Ollie. “A 3-2 win!”
Simon immediately tugged off his shirt and offered it first to Tilly, who took one sniff and wrinkled her nose in disgust. He dropped it on the ground next to Nails.
“You’re a real star, Zero! Don’t reckon we could’ve done it without you.”
Simon was used to the sarcasm and ignored it.
“Meet Captain Kevin, my big brother,” he said to his new friend. “This is Ollie, who’s starting at our school next week, so he can play for us in the Final now.”
Nails was still propped up on his elbows and he looked Ollie up and down – which was a long way for his eyes to travel.
“Can he really?” he drawled. “He looks like more like a matchstick to me, with that red hair. I hate red hair. Clashes with our kit.”
Ollie did not know how to reply, so Simon spoke instead.
“Right, join the club, Ollie. He hates everything, so you’ll fit in just fine.”
Dad came up at that point, to tell them he had to return to the shop in time for the lunchtime rush.
“Great goal, Kev,” he said, using his real name for once. “I’ll go and watch the Final, of course, and I’ll try to get your mother to come too, eh?”
“You brought us good luck again, Dad,” Jake said, and grinned. “And you nearly saw all of us on the pitch at the same time.”
“That can wait for the Final now,” Dad said, and turned to Simon. “Well, at least I was here when you made your school team debut, son.”
Simon nodded. Somehow it didn’t really feel like a proper debut when he hadn’t even had a kick of the ball.
Nails had the last word. “Yeah, blink and you missed it,” he muttered.
Sticks and Stones
“This is Oliver,” said Mrs Gregson, introducing the lanky, red-haired boy to her class on Monday morning. “Say hello, everyone.”
There were only a few mumbles in response, and Ollie felt his face on fire as the children stared at him.
“Right, Oliver,” the teacher went on quickly. “Come this way.”
Mrs Gregson led the new boy through the maze of tables to where she wanted him to sit. She knew there would be a spare place next to Sadiq in the far corner, even in her overcrowded classroom. Ollie did not quite make it. A leg shot out to trip him up and he toppled over like a chopped-down tree.
“Tim-ber!” cried one of the boys nearby.
A ripple of giggles soon turned into a wave of laughter as Ollie slowly picked himself up off the floor and rubbed his sore knee.
“Be quiet!” said Mrs Gregson crossly, not knowing who was to blame. “Take Oliver into the book corner, please, Sadiq, and help him find something to read.”
Ollie limped across the room, watching out for any more stray legs.
“C’mon, hurry up!” Sadiq hissed, as Ollie peered at the racks of shelves. “Don’t take all day.”
“There’s such a lot of books,” said Ollie. “I love reading, don’t you?”
“No – it’s boring.”
Ollie stood up straight in surprise, towering over Sadiq, who was leaning against the wall.
“You can’t really mean that.”
“I always mean what I say,” Sadiq replied, “and say what I mean.”
While Ollie tried to work out the difference, Sadiq went on talking.
“That’s why the other kids don’t much like me. I speak my mind and tell the truth.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Because most of them don’t. They often lie to try and get me into trouble.”
“Well, I won’t do that,” Ollie promised. “Huh!” Sadiq grunted in response. “We’ll see.”
Ollie pulled a soccer book off the top shelf. “This looks good. I like sports stories.”
Sadiq stared up at him. “Why are you so tall?”
Ollie looked down at him and grinned. “Why are you so small?”
Sadiq actually returned the grin. “C’mon, Matchstick Man,” he said, with a playful push. “Let’s get back to our table, before Greg gives me another job to do.”
Sadiq’s next job was to show Ollie how the dinner system worked.
“What do you think of the food, then, Matchstick Man?” he asked.
“OK,” Ollie replied. “What there is of it, anyway.”
“You mean, you want more of this muck?”
Ollie nodded. “Yeah, we often had seconds at my old school.”
“It’s a wonder you’re not fat.”
“I run it all off,” he grinned. “Y’know, playing football and stuff.”
“You any good?” Sadiq asked.
“OK, I guess.”
“You keep saying that.�
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“What?”
“OK.”
“Well, they are my initials,” Ollie told him. “My name’s Oliver Kenning. Some kids even used to call me OK.”
“Might do that myself,” Sadiq chuckled.
“Well, guess it’s better than Matchstick Man,” Ollie said with a shrug. “Have you got a nickname?” Sadiq ignored the question as Simon joined them at their table.
“Hiya, Ollie. How’s your first morning gone?”
“Slowly,” he said, his mouth full of food.
Sadiq watched in disgust as Simon tipped tomato ketchup onto his chips. He pushed his own plate to one side.
“Aren’t you Nails’ kid brother?” he asked, and Simon nodded. “He’s away today. What’s up with him?”
“Sick,” said Simon. “He was in bed most of the weekend.”
“It’s a lot quieter without him messing about in class and talking all the time.”
“Yeah, bet it is. Think yourself lucky you don’t have to put up with all that at home like me.”
“Poor you!”
“Just as well he played on Saturday,” said Ollie. “You wouldn’t have won without him.”
“We!” Simon reminded him, and they chuckled.
“Yeah, right – we,” Ollie agreed. “When’s the footie practice this week? Can’t wait to join in.”
“Wednesday, after school – so long as there isn’t a game.”
“Will you be there?”
Simon hadn’t even thought about that. He’d never been to one before.
“Dunno,” he mumbled, and started to tuck into his chips.
“Do you go, Sadiq?” asked Ollie.
“Nah, not really bothered,” he said with a shrug. “Never been invited, anyway.”
“Well, why don’t we all go?” Ollie suggested. “C’mon, it’d help me too.”
They looked at one another.
“Might do,” said Sadiq.
Simon grinned. “Yeah, why not? Anything to annoy Captain Kevin!”
At that moment, two girls came by their table. One of them pushed the other into Sadiq, making him spill his glass of water.
“Watch it!” he complained.
