by Miriam Sved
Huffing along beside him, Ranga detects a note of self-consciousness creeping into the kid’s voice but still no sign of fatigue. It’s unreal. They’re in the last leg of the sprint course, which is a descending series of distances – first a long run to the furthest of the witch’s hats, maybe forty metres away, then two to the one in front of that, three to the next and so on, so that in the end you’re running back and forth, back and forth over the ten metres between the goal post and the closest hat. It’s this ten metres that’ll break your spirit, not because of the sprinting but because of the turning – every few seconds the quivering flesh of your thighs forced to stop ninety-five kilos of momentum and swivel the machine, start it off in a new, juddering direction.
Ranga looks up and realises he and the kid are alone on the circuits; the rest of the guys are jogging a cool-down lap up the other end of the oval. It looks heavenly, that jogging – the steady, comforting rhythm of a stable heartbeat. At least the kid’s finally stopped talking, but he’s still keeping pace with Ranga, shadowing him back and forth around the hats. Infuriating, humiliating.
O’Brien wanders over and draws a line under the humiliation, loud enough for the guys up the other end of the field to hear. ‘C’mon, Reece!’ he shouts. ‘Stop holding yourself back to that limp dick’s pace. You wanna be a fat bastard when you grow up too, is that it?’
And the kid, with a slippery sidelong glance at Ranga, takes off with the cruellest, easiest spring around the witch’s hat.
Ranga’s breathing is all over the place now and his thighs aren’t even the biggest problem anymore – it’s that he can feel the lactic acid building, poison leaking from his overstretched muscles and rising in his gut. Everyone gets it at some stage during the season; there are players who’ll go down to the rooms and have a chuck like some clockwork part of their quarter-time ritual, but Ranga’s never been one of them, he’s never been an easy chucker, and besides, this isn’t the adrenalin-pumped intensity of a game. The first training session. He swallows hard and tries to empty his mind. The kid laps him; four more to go. Jesus, the pain in his legs, his chest.
He manages to get to the end of the circuit without losing his breakfast, but by then the rest of the guys are done with the cool-down and O’Brien is bossing them into groups for a game of bash-and-grab. A tackling exercise no more sophisticated than the old primary-school game of bullrush – famous for more broken bones than the asphalt around the monkey bars. Two on one with a lone man shepherding, more like a rugby exercise than footy, since the goal is to get the ball past the tacklers without a mark to kick to. Whatever the coaching staff say about this game – about strength and agility, the quick-thinking reflexes of dodge and shimmy – bash-and-grab is really about one thing: fear. Ranga’s still heaving when he is lined up with three others, eyes blurred with sweat so he doesn’t even register who they are at first. Only when they’re broken into twos does he see that the kid, Mick, is still with him. A surge of scalding heat that could be lactic acid bubbles up his torso. That fucking kid will be the end of him today.
‘Mate, you right?’
Ranga turns and finds Kev at his shoulder – O’Brien has given them another chance to train together. The acidic tide recedes a bit.
‘Thought you were gonna have an epi on that sprint circuit,’ Kev says.
‘Yeah, well, I saw the colour of your face on the jog, so don’t gimme any shit.’ This is easier – much, much easier than the kid’s humiliating solidarity.
They’re at the fifty-metre arc and they line up for the tackle. The kid’s got the ball and Case, one of the small forwards, is shepherding for him. O’Brien is there, watching them warm up, and it occurs to Ranga that the fitness coach has badly mismatched their group – usually he sets up players against others roughly their own size. Maybe during the season, if a small guy’s gonna get a heavy tag, O’Brien might match him with some talls to feel what he’s in for. But this, in the first session – Ranga and Kev, two of the biggest bodies on the team, both of them there to impede the flimsy kid.
O’Brien catches Ranga looking at him and raises his eyebrows. ‘Thought you might like a chance to show the newbie one area you can kick his skinny arse in,’ he says.
Ranga pulls the sides of his mouth into a smile and looks back at the kid, who’s bouncing from side to side with the ball tucked under one arm. Maybe seventy kilos of him, seventy-five tops; his torso must be the width of one of Ranga’s thighs. Ranga’s still sweating from the sprints but he feels cold suddenly. He tries to jog himself loose, kicking his bum with his heels.
O’Brien blows his whistle and the kid stops his bouncing and begins to run. The world slows down. Out of the corner of his vision Ranga sees another team down the ground. He looks back at the kid running towards him and instead of bracing for the tackle he can’t stop noticing things – the flap of the kid’s left hand as though it’s churning through air; the expression on his face, which reminds Ranga somehow of Kev’s kid Rochelle when she digs in behind some demand (don’t wanna go to bed!); and then suddenly the kid’s whole body becomes a suggestion of childhood: the way his chest has developed beyond the scope of his limbs, the extra billowing fabric of his guernsey. And the self-belief of childhood. The kid’s speed and determination as he runs towards Ranga and Kev, towards a wall of grown-up muscle – Ranga sees this for what it is: a stupid decision. In footy there are decisions you make which in life would get you committed to the loony bin. Step backwards into the stampede of bodies, thinking only about the fall of a lifeless knot of cow hide (the ball tucked beneath the kid’s arm, dangerous goitre, close enough now for Ranga to see the familiar stitching along its edge). Anywhere else a decision like that would be called reckless, irresponsible. With Cob or O’Brien watching it’s called putting your body on the line. The kid is maybe twenty metres away now, putting his body on the line, the line beyond which there could be . . . what? Ranga sees the man on the road, the twitching blackness. A punctured spleen is one common tackling-related injury; Ranga knows two men it’s happened to, the organ’s poison flooding out into the body’s delicate mechanisms.
Or maybe it’ll be nothing like that – probably this tackle is no more menacing, no more significant than any of the thousands, literally thousands of tackles he’s laid before. What’s wrong with him? He must be going soft, which is the worst way for a professional footballer – a hard man – to go. And not even soft for himself but on behalf of some snotty kid – number-two draft pick, probably got footy scholarships to the best schools and now going into the League on a good salary, maybe not that much less than Ranga himself makes.
Ranga hunkers down and for a moment the world speeds up again and he’s back in the flow of it, the automatic momentum of the game. But the kid’s maybe ten metres away and now he ducks his head down. In a game it could be playing for the free; in a practice session it looks like a death wish. The thought of tackling the kid headfirst closes Ranga’s window of calm and makes everything a decision again – the decision to send a fire-bolt of ripples down the fragile stalk of a neck. Cob and O’Brien are both watching from the outskirts of the field. Ranga’s sweating badly; he can’t stop thinking about how young the kid is, and how he probably hasn’t even got his end away yet, let alone all the other stuff. Then it all starts tramping through his brain – stuff you’re only supposed to think about when you’re about to snuff it: the first time with Lisa, then the hospital after the prelim final that second season, Lisa and his mum standing over him (good boy, Steve, his mum said, you done well), and then the four of them – him and Kev and Lisa and Linda. The long December nights, the colours of the sky.
Thinking of Kev makes him aware of the ruckman’s body crouched beside him, and he realises for the first time that the decision, the terrible decision running towards him, is not only his to make. It’s Kev’s too. The ruckman’s big body will rob the kid of everything. Cob and O’Brien are watching on, and
Ranga’s a man who needs his contract extended, but it’s no use. It’s no use because suddenly he understands with an awful clarity the message of the man on the road, of his twitching flesh. The message is matter. Contracts don’t matter as much as cells, and it’s not really Ranga’s decision so much as the decision of survival itself that makes him shift his tackling position away from the kid and towards Kev, towards his best mate’s menacing bulk. Now he has both the hard man and the running kid in his sights, and he braces for impact.
The rules
Round one
By the time Shell and I get to the bar it’s already half full with all the losers who couldn’t hack it and copped out before the siren. My heels are killing me, and I’ll admit I’m a bit on edge about seeing Luke Camperos. There’s no sign of him yet, or any of the other players.
We get one of the last tables by the window so we can see when they start arriving. They’ll be here alright, even if there won’t be any cheering today. Especially today, after a game like that, they’ll be here. I feel gutted about the game – of course I do, it’s a bloody terrible way to start the season – but at the same time I’m thinking that a loss, a bad loss, can make it easier to get in with the guys. After a win you have to fight your way through a whole troop of fair-weather fans, all hanging around and gloating like it was their support that got the team home. Nah, it’s the ones like me and Shell, the ones who turn up after a bollocking. We’re the real fans.
Of course I’m hoping I might get a look-in with the new boy, Marvel Mickey they’re calling him. Even if he is barely legal – that could be a good thing, might make the new rules easier to follow tonight. I’ve got a good feeling about him. Young blood: eager to please, on the field and off it. Specially a boy like Mickey Reece – he might be Marvel Mickey when he’s taking a flying mark in front of goal, but I figure no-one that funny-looking could have done well in the high-school romance game.
Shell’s got eyes for Marvel too. As soon as we sit down she starts going on about him – about his game, and his hair, and whether he’s ripped. Not that I blame her, there’s sweet FA else to talk about after a game like that, unless you want to be like the guy at the next table who’s bitching about all the players – about how the forwards couldn’t keep their positions and the back line was bloody soft. I could tell him a thing or two about the back line going soft. That thought gives me the giggles, and once I start I can’t stop.
‘What’s so funny?’ Shell looks a bit cut with me, like I haven’t been paying attention to her, which I haven’t.
‘Sorry, babe, nothing.’ Still laughing. ‘I’ll go get us a drink.’
Poor Shell, I think. I bend over to get my purse and sneak a look at her muffin top. Shell’s great.
I’m feeling pretty good on my way to the bar, in my new team halter-neck. I can feel men’s eyes on my body. Even though I know Luke Camperos will be there tonight, I feel pretty good.
The guys start coming in while I’m at the bar – a bunch from the leadership group first. Shame I went ahead and got us drinks, ’cos if you can’t get in close to a new guy any other way it’s a good idea to go up to the bar at the same time as him. Then you can talk to him about what he’s ordering, or you can bump into him on your way back to the table, with your drinks and his between you and a big laughing mess with wet tops and fumbling hands. That’s what I did with Luke.
I head back to Shell with our Breezers, trying to make my mind stick on to Marvel Mickey. The players are all coming in now – there’s Russell King and Cameron Buta (both played like sacks of tatties), and Ranga McPhee, who’s out for the first two games on some disciplinary thing. And then Luke Camperos is there and I didn’t even see him come in. He’s with his girlfriend, and even though the pub’s well heated I’m suddenly shivery. They walk past, right near our table, and Luke never even glances at me. His girlfriend does though. She looks at me then looks away again and holds on to Luke’s arm, and the tight little line of her mouth lets me know that Luke’s told her something. Some lie about me.
I guess I should feel sorry for her, living every day with a guy like that. But I don’t. If I was one of the girlfriends . . . Of course I don’t want to be Luke’s anymore, but one of the other’s – even Cameron Buta’s, even having to wake up to that ugly mug would be okay. Luke never could have treated me like that if I was one of the girlfriends. Walking with the boys, talking about the game. Laughing up the red carpet at the Brownlow. I could pull off the Twigley red dress – I’ve tried on one like it.
‘Babe, you alright?’ Shell’s looking at me funny; I must’ve vagued out.
‘Sorry, yeah. Just thinking about Marvel Mickey.’
That sets her off again, and I set myself to thinking about him too – no more Luke bloody Camperos.
So many players are here now that I begin to worry I might have missed Mickey coming in. I scan their heads, looking for the patch of red. I can hear bits of what they’re saying – Leigh Mason’s going on and on about the opposition being dirty and playing for frees, and Ranga McPhee’s telling guys all the things they did right (you can’t do much right and still lose by that margin). And just then there’s a commotion over by the door. I needn’t have worried about missing Marvel – it’s a regular party as soon as he walks in: people clapping, a few wolf-whistles, and the girls! All these bloody girls just appear from nowhere. Two steps into the bar he’s swamped by them, all in club guernseys and not much else. He sort of steers them towards the team table.
‘Practically flashing their bloody tits at him,’ I say to Shell.
‘Yeah,’ she says, all wistful, as if she’d pay good money to flash her tits at him.
I smile as he walks by our table and stick my chest out, but just like Luke he never even glances at me. All my big plans to get in with the new boy, make it into the team like that – I know then that it’s all useless dreams. And this feeling comes over me, spreading through my brain and my body: tiredness like a blanket that could cover the whole world. It makes even nookie seem pointless, something people do like zombies, just to try to prove they’re alive.
That must be the great thing about playing footy, I think. Knowing you’re alive. Mickey Reece, taking that flying mark with the air in his face.
So I’m just slumped there, not even caring when Luke’s girlfriend walks by and stink-eyes me, not even sure what I’m doing there anymore, just thinking about the game and Mickey and how my dad would have rated him as a player (too flashy to tell, I reckon he would have said, but if he sticks in they might get a footballer out of him) and that’s when I see him, copping an eyeful of me. He’s doing it on the sly, and he looks away as soon as he catches that I’m on to him. Just a gimpy, skinny black kid – with a plaster cast sticking out of his pants leg and crutches resting beside him – sitting a little way off from the rest of the guys. But he’s wearing team colours. I’ve never seen him before. I thought I knew all the boys on sight.
Shell’s saying something about Mickey Reece, and even though it’s not a joke I laugh with my head thrown back and my hair flowing down (what the fuck is wrong with you? she says).
I get up without a word to Shell and go back to the bar, and I know he’s still watching me. I’m careful not to turn in his direction, not to disturb the line of his stare. I don’t even know yet if he’s in the team.
I take the drinks back to the table and I’ve made my decision. Telling Shell I’ll be back in a mo, I head off towards the toilets, which are in the same direction as the table the black kid has to himself.
The next bit I’ve got all worked out, but it doesn’t go so smoothly. Walking by him, I’d planned to give his sticking-out plastered foot a little tap – just a touch, nothing to cause the guy pain. But my sense of space must be out of whack – maybe I’ve drunk more than I thought. He makes a small cracking noise when I make contact with the foot and grabs at his upper thigh.
‘
Oh shit,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.’ I lean down towards the spindly looking foot and flap at the air around it. Bloody great, Bec. First the thing with Mickey and now you cripple some poor kid who should be chatting you up.
He’s in pain – I can tell from the way his face is all clamped down and the creases in his forehead (the rest of his face so smooth and young) – but he says, ‘S’okay, you don’t have to . . . S’okay.’
Instead of this whole cool scene where I start up a casual conversation, just to be gracious because of the tap on his foot, and then I go to move away and he convinces me to stay and sit down with him – instead of that, I flop down into the chair across from him and put my head in my hands.
‘I’m sorry. I can’t believe I kicked you.’
‘Hey, s’okay, it was an accident, yeah,’ he says.
I smile up through my hair, thinking, what a sweet guy. This is how it should be. This is how Luke Camperos should have treated me. As soon as I look at him he looks away, down to his leg, and then away from his leg as if the leg has shamed him.
‘That must’ve really hurt,’ I say.
He shrugs.
‘Lots of blokes get picked up injured but that looks like a doozey. What is it, a compound?’
He looks up like he’s surprised, then does a little twitching thing with his cheek and looks away again.
‘Yeah, I can tell from how big the cast is; my dad had one,’ I say. ‘He was picked up by the club in ’76 but he only got two games in the seconds before he did his leg, and then they dropped him not long after that – ’cos of the leg, I s’pose.’
I realise what I just said.
