He tried to wrap an arm round McCooley’s shoulders, but McCooley quickly shrugged him off.
‘This guy saved our lives,’ Darren said.
‘Nice one, Mr McCooley,’ Stevie said.
Barbara and Limbsy began to applaud, but when McCooley’s eyes narrowed they reconsidered and stopped mid-clap.
‘Why do you lot have to be so annoyin’? Everythin’ that happens doesn’t have to be a big deal. It’s over, so just shut up about it, all right?’
It may have been over, Noah thought, but he could see that Darren and Sunday weren’t going to forget it any time soon and neither were the others the way they were gathering around McCooley, much to his annoyance. Noah noticed that everyone was in better humour now than they had been after an entire week of training. His mind was made up. He was going to do things differently from now on. He was going to make sure they had fun. And if they had fun they might play well and then he’d have a chance in the tournament. He was going to fire Dig Grimsby as their manager. After all, this was supposed to be about football and they hadn’t even played a practice match yet and it was the eighth of May; the tournament was only just over a month away.
‘Afternoon, ladies and germs,’ Grimsby said, arriving at the door just at the moment Noah was thinking about him. He smelled of beer and stale cigarettes. He was still wearing the same tracksuit he’d had on for every training session so far. It had become so worn it was shiny.
‘Hey, Gaffer, I need to have a word with you,’ Noah said.
‘No time for a word now, Moses. We’ve got a match to play.’
CHAPTER NINETEEN
‘Newcastle, of course, unbeaten in their last five wins’
Brian Moore
When Grimsby had told them a few minutes earlier that he’d organized a match, the St Mary’s team had been delighted and Noah had wondered if he’d misjudged the man after all. But when he saw the opposition waiting on The Hatch’s pitch, he knew he hadn’t. Noah had expected them to be tough, but he hadn’t expected them to be grown men.
Not a single one of them was under thirty and two of them looked as if it had been at least a couple of years since they’d seen their sixtieth birthdays. The rest of the St Mary’s team stared open-mouthed at the big bruisers trotting around the pitch battering the ball back and forth to each other as they warmed up.
‘All right, lads,’ Dig Grimsby said. ‘I see you’re acquainting yourself with the opposition. A few of the lads from work. They’ll give you a right old game.’
Ten minutes later, after much grumbling from Noah’s teammates, they were ready to play. Only ten of the St Mary’s squad were getting a game even though it was an eleven-a-side match. Dig Grimsby had decided that he would be better able to assess the quality of his players if he was right in the middle of the action, so he was playing in the match himself. He was going to be a striker. To their consternation, Maggie and Barbara were stuck shivering on the sideline.
‘All right, lads, gather round,’ Grimsby said.
They formed a huddle around him just on the edge of their eighteen-yard line. Since they hadn’t got their own kit yet, most of the St Mary’s team wore replica football jerseys. Darren may have been missing a shoe, but at least he had a pair of boots with him. Michael Griffin wore a full Dukla Prague away kit that had belonged to his father. Cormac McHugh was in a red Liverpool shirt just as he always was, while Sunday was dressed in the green of Nigeria.
McCooley wasn’t wearing a football jersey at all. Instead, he wore a ripped T-shirt that depicted a horde of zombies feasting on a screaming victim. His boots had holes all over them and they were held together by duct tape.
‘Right, this lot aren’t great skillwise, but they are tough. They’re not going to want to be shown up by a bunch of kids, so if you manage to get past them they’ll probably kick you up and down the pitch until your legs are hanging on to your knees by a strip of tendon. Now, remember, it’s a man’s game. If they hit you, get back up immediately and act like you’re fine. I don’t want you lot embarrassing me, so no whingeing or cry-baby stuff. We need real men like my old pal, Seamus Barry. He got hit so hard once he dislodged his own Adam’s apple. Played on till the end of the match before driving himself to hospital. So badly injured he never spoke again, but we won the match 2–1, so the sacrifice was worth it. That’s what I want from you today.’
‘You want us to permanently disfigure ourselves?’ Darren Nolan said.
‘They can kick my head off if they want but there is no way they are scoring a goal,’ Piotr shouted. He jumped up and down and slapped his gloved hands together.
‘Aren’t you going to discuss tactics?’
‘Who said that?’ Grimsby peered over the huddle and spotted Stevie. ‘Ah, it’s my old friend, R2D2. Beep-beep-boop. Always chattering away. You spend too much time thinking. I’ve warned you about that. The tactic is: give me the ball and I’ll score a goal.’
The opposition’s captain and his fellow midfielder, a steely-eyed man in a Pearl Jam T-shirt, stood in the centre circle, ready to start. The wind swirled around, blowing a plastic coffee cup and a discarded red Grudz packet across the pitch.
There was a sound like thundering hooves on the turf as the captain passed the ball to the Pearl Jam fan. Noah glanced round to see McCooley racing forward. He was a blur of motion. A squat, barrel-chested blur of motion. As soon as the Pearl Jam fan received the ball, McCooley went through him. It was a matter of conjecture as to whether he got the ball or the player first. To Noah, it looked as if he got them both at the same time. Mr Pearl Jam and the ball went flying through the air.
‘Wow, that kid’s mental,’ Grimsby purred. He turned to Noah. ‘You see that? That’s exactly the kind of passion and unthinking behaviour I want from each and every one of you.’
The opposition were gobsmacked. They knew they were in a game now and the centre-back and the goalkeeper acknowledged the fact by extinguishing their cigarettes. The opposition’s captain looked beseechingly at Grimsby, who was also acting as referee.
‘Not even close to being a foul. Play on,’ Grimsby shouted as McCooley took the ball under control on the second bounce and passed it to within a couple of metres of Noah.
It wasn’t a good pass, but the other team were slow to react and Noah was on the move, floating past one, two players in a heartbeat. Hawk Willis flew down the wing. The left midfielder turned and tried to go with him, but he was forty-five years old and hadn’t been fully fit since the spring of 1998. Willis was too fast and, more importantly, too far ahead to be fouled.
Noah, using his foot like a wedged golf club, lofted a long pass into the corner, into the space behind the left-back. To Noah’s surprise, and to Hawk Willis’s too, the young flyer managed to control the ball in one movement, before whipping in a cross to the edge of the area. McCooley had continued his run and met the cross first time with a ferocious volley.
Noah had never seen a football struck so powerfully. He had never seen one struck so inaccurately either. It pinged at least six metres above the crossbar, sailing high over a fence and into the wasteland behind the pitch.
It took them ten minutes to find the ball and get the match restarted.
It was competitive, but no one put in any hard tackles on the younger team. It wasn’t out of respect or because they didn’t want to hurt a group of youngsters. It was fear, pure and simple. They were too afraid of what McCooley might do to them. By half-time it was still 0–0 and the older men looked exhausted and drained. Most of them weren’t used to regular exercise and it was just the captain and one of the midfielders holding things together.
Stevie made notes on a spiralbound pad, furiously scribbling down every thought that passed through his mind.
‘What do you make of it?’ Maggie asked him.
‘Better than I thought. It’s disjointed, but that’s partly down to quality of the pitch and partly because Mr Grimsby is playing players in the wrong positions. Mr McCooley’s possibly
the hardest worker I’ve ever seen, but he can’t pass the ball to save his life. And that tackle in the first minute?’
‘I know, right. Wasn’t that the most awesome thing you’ve ever seen?’
‘If by awesome you mean terrifying, then yes. I think a couple of the poor man’s teeth landed near me,’ he said.
Maggie smiled. ‘What else?’
‘Well, if Limbsy relaxed he could be a real handful. Hawk is lightning fast, but he doesn’t always make the right choices. Piotr hasn’t had much to do, but he looks confident and capable. Michael Griffin and Darren Nolan are obviously full-backs, so I don’t know why they’re playing in the centre. And as for Mr Grimsby, well, he shouts very well and he managed to kick Hawk a couple of times, but it’s almost impossible to believe he’s ever played professional football.’
‘Good analysis,’ Maggie said.
She winked at Stevie before jumping up and down and waving her arms to attract Grimsby’s attention. ‘Hey, Gaffer. It’s time to put me on. Pretty Boy needs some game time.’
‘You’ll get your chance when I say so,’ Grimsby said, much to her frustration.
Noah saw Maggie throw her shin pads on the ground in anger. He looked at their middle-aged manager huffing and puffing as he practised juggling the ball when he should have been giving his half-time team talk. It was ridiculous. Noah felt the anger beginning to well up inside him.
St Mary’s began the second half well, but their good form faded quickly and they were soon under pressure. The opposition, realizing belatedly that they had a height advantage, pushed their forwards further up the field and began to launch the ball high and long into the box.
A couple of minutes later and Noah’s team was 1–0 down. A belter from twenty-five metres was finger-tipped on to the post by Piotr. The captain was on the rebound in a flash. He had one arm in the air celebrating before he realized Piotr had somehow managed to scramble across the goal and get his hand to it again. The goalkeeper wasn’t able to stop the third shot, though. The grown men leaped about manically in celebration as Piotr thumped the ground in frustration.
‘What kind of defending was that? If Robbie Savage saw that, he’d poke his own eyes out,’ Dig Grimsby shouted, pulling at his hair and jumping up and down. ‘My old mother could have done a better job and she has varicose veins and an inability to turn left. I’ve seen better defending from school kids.’
‘We are school kids, Gaffer,’ Darren Nolan said.
‘You think you’re so smart, don’t you? Twenty press-ups, Jackeen.’
That’s it, Noah thought, he’s lost the plot. Even the opposition were staring at Grimsby as his red face turned purple. None of them had ever seen a man in his forties throw a tantrum like a two-year-old in a supermarket before. It seemed as if it was only a matter of time before he burst into tears.
‘Can we stop all the messing, lads? We have to kick off,’ Frank said, rubbing his ankle. He’d gone over on it as he tried to tackle the goal scorer. Darren dropped to the ground and began doing press-ups as Hawk tapped the ball to Adam O’Brien who raced off with it, his ponytail flying out behind him, his tattoos an inky-blue blur.
Noah had finally had enough. He’d reached breaking point. This was all wrong. Not a single person on his team was enjoying themselves, except Piotr maybe – that guy seemed to make the best of everything.
‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘Darren, stop doing press-ups.’
‘I give the orders around here, Moses,’ Grimsby said. He was practically spitting with fury. ‘Drop and give me twenty.’
‘No,’ Noah said. ‘I’m not doing things your way any longer.’
‘O-ho, boyo. You need to learn a lesson. Make it thirty press-ups, so. Keep pushing me. I can count past a hundred.’
‘Mr Grimsby, I’ve had enough. We’ve all had enough. You’re a joke. You’re fired.’
Grimsby began to splutter with fury. He couldn’t believe his ears. ‘Fired? Fired? You’re firing me? You can’t fire me, you little shih-tzu.’
‘Then how come I just did?’
‘Hey, Noah,’ Frank called. ‘Sorry to interrupt, but we’ve just let in another goal.’
With Noah and Dig Grimsby arguing, and Darren still paused in the press-up position, the team was outnumbered and the older men had muscled their way through to blast the ball past Piotr. It was 2–0. Kevin McCooley let out a roar of anguish.
‘Now look what you did,’ Grimsby shouted. ‘You take charge for one second and we let in a goal. This team doesn’t need you – it needs me. I played for Swindon Town.’
‘In the League Cup,’ Sunday said. ‘Nearly thirty years ago.’
‘It still counts,’ Grimsby roared. He puffed out his chest. ‘I’m not going and there’s nothing you can do about it.’
‘Don’t make us do this the hard way, Mr Grimsby.’
‘I dare you to try,’ Grimsby said.
‘Mr McCooley,’ Noah said. He waved at McCooley to attract his attention. ‘Can you escort our former gaffer off the pitch, please.’
‘Ha, you don’t scare me. I played against the likes of Danny “Leg Chomper” McDougal so a ten-year-old kid doesn’t frighten me,’ Grimsby harrumphed.
But as Kevin McCooley took a couple of steps towards him the older man swiftly reconsidered. He scampered off the pitch.
‘Aw, are you going, Mr Grimsby? We’re really going to miss you,’ Maggie said as her now former manager hopped on his bike.
Grimsby ignored her.
‘One week and half a match. That’s how long you gave me to work my magic,’ he roared at his former players. ‘Even Chelsea Football Club gives managers longer than that. You don’t deserve my expertise, you bunch of ungrateful, moaning, girly little whingers.’
He reached inside his tracksuit top and produced a short silver tube. He held it up for them all to see.
‘This is a Cuban cigar. Cohiba Esplendidos. It cost me over fifty euro. I’ve been saving it for a special occasion. Well, I’ve just decided when that occasion is – the day you lot of snot-kickers get knocked out of the tournament. That’ll be one sweet moment.’
He kissed the cigar tube before pocketing it, then lit a cigarette, waved goodbye using only two of the available fingers on his right hand and cycled away, shouting something about how cheeky young people were these days. Nobody was sorry to see him leave.
‘I was really warming to that man,’ Piotr said.
Well, almost nobody.
‘Can you give us a minute?’ Noah said to the other team’s captain.
‘No problem.’
Noah gathered the team around him. The day’s first drops of rain began to fall.
‘OK, we have about ten minutes left. Forget the score, let’s just do what we can.’
Maggie appeared beside them. Her brand new San Jose Earthquakes jersey was spotlessly clean. ‘Who’s coming off so I can go on?’
‘My ankle took a battering and it could do with a rest,’ Frank said.
‘I’m not playing at the back,’ Maggie said. ‘I’m a creator not a destroyer.’
‘All right,’ Noah said. ‘Barbara, you’re on for your brother.’
Barbara’s face was emotionless, but her fingers trembled as she struggled to unzip her tracksuit top.
‘They’re bringing on a girl. Now we’re really in trouble,’ someone shouted.
A trademark McCooley glare shut him up.
‘Who is that kid?’ one of the opposition whispered to a teammate.
‘I think he’s a McCooley,’ was the hushed reply.
‘That explains a lot.’
It was Kevin McCooley who went off the pitch to be replaced by Maggie. He didn’t say anything to anyone – he just walked off.
‘Thanks, Kevin,’ Maggie said with a smile, before turning to the others. ‘Right, let’s show this lot how to play the game. None of this long ball stuff or just panicking and getting rid of it.’
‘Wait, I’m the captain. I’m the one who should
be talking about tactics,’ Noah said.
‘Who died and made you Queen of Everything?’ Maggie asked.
‘We don’t have a manager, so the captain’s next in line. Now let’s—’
‘We need a manager, man,’ Hawk Willis said. ‘I don’t work well in an unstructured environment.’
Michael Griffin nodded solemnly.
‘I know,’ Noah said, ‘but we don’t have one and—’
‘Stevie should be manager,’ Barbara said.
Thirteen faces turned in her direction and she reddened up immediately.
‘What?’ Noah began to laugh, but then the laugh caught in his throat. ‘Are you being serious?’
‘That’s actually a good idea, Barbara,’ Darren said.
‘Yeah, I agree. Stevie’s always analysing stuff. He knows everything there is to know about us. It makes sense,’ Sunday said. ‘He’s the one who spotted the loophole that allowed us into the tournament as well. And he can’t be any worse than Grimsby.’
Noah thought the idea was ridiculous. Stevie wouldn’t do it – he couldn’t handle the pressure.
‘Ahm, yeah, well, actually,’ Stevie began. ‘I wouldn’t . . . you know . . . mind giving it a go. If it’s not putting anybody out or causing any trouble,’ he said.
‘Right, show of hands. Who wants Stevie as manager?’ Maggie asked.
Everyone raised their hands – everyone except Noah, that is. He was still in shock. Little Stevie Treacy a manager? He didn’t like being the centre of attention. Yet there he was, beaming with delight.
‘OK, much as you all want to sit around braiding each other’s hair and telling each other how great you are, we have a match to win. What are we going to do, boss?’ Maggie said.
Stevie steadied himself and took a deep breath.
‘Just keep it simple. You’re good players and you’re faster than they are, but, other than Mr McCooley, they’re stronger, so you basically want to use your pace and avoid any confrontations,’ he said, his voice trembling. ‘Find some space, get the ball, pass it quickly and move into more space. They won’t be able to keep up. Some of them turn as slowly as an articulated lorry. Don’t just belt the ball away. That’s playing into their hands. Pass. Move. Pass. No battles. No long balls. Is that OK?’
The Mighty Dynamo Page 14
