Man of the Match

by Dan Freedman

  “That means, a), you will play exactly where I tell you to play and b), you only – and I mean ONLY EVER – refer to me as Mr Porlock. Capische?”

  “What?” asked Jamie timidly. He was in shock at how Porlock had changed from mad funny to mad scary in the space of seconds.

  “DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?” Porlock shouted. It was so loud that a flock of birds in a tree above their heads all flew away.

  “Yes . . . Mr Porlock,” murmured Jamie.

  “Good. Then perhaps you and I are beginning to understand each other. So, let me ask you again: what position are you going to play tomorrow?”

  This is a test, Jamie thought to himself. Mustn’t crack. Got to stay focused. Have to work my way back up. One more mistake and I’m in trouble. Big trouble.

  “I’ll play on the right wing, Mr Porlock,” Jamie somehow managed to spit out. “I’ll play anywhere you want me to play.”

  “Well done, James,” said Porlock. “That is the correct answer.”

  “Where’s the long-sleeved shirts, mate?” Jamie asked the Seaport Town kit man.

  As he pulled on his long-sleeved blue-and-white-striped top, Jamie was aware of the muffled sounds of laughter from the other Seaport players, who were all in short sleeves, despite the cold.

  “What?” Jamie laughed. “It’s like minus ten out there! Just cos you lot don’t mind freezing doesn’t mean I have to as well!”

  Even before Jamie got the ball, he’d already decided what he was going to do. He was a Premier League player. It was showtime.

  Jamie flicked the ball into the air and started running with it. He was doing keep-ups as he went. Keep-ups with his knee, his thigh, his he—

  BANG!

  Jamie had been decked. It wasn’t so much a tackle as an assault! And play had been allowed to go on. It wasn’t even a free-kick!

  “Ref!” Jamie roared, leaping up and chasing after the official. “Ref, what’s going on? That would be a sending-off in the Premier League! The geezer almost sliced my chest open!”

  The referee didn’t even look at Jamie as he simply responded: “We’re not playing in the Premier League now.”

  Even in his long-sleeved shirt, Jamie was freezing. He couldn’t imagine what the others felt like. His teeth were actually starting to chatter. He had to keep moving just to stop his body freezing up.

  “Yes!” he shouted, running into acres of space down the line. “Play me in!”

  Receiving the ball, Jamie drove forward a few yards and then quickly back-heeled it behind him. He assumed the full-back would be supporting him. He’d seen the Brazil players do it loads of times.

  But the Seaport Town full-back was not there. He was twenty yards behind.

  Jamie flung his arms up into the air in frustration.

  He looked to the dugout for help. He couldn’t do this by himself. He needed someone to work with. A player who could read his game. Who was on his level.

  Quickly there was some activity on the Seaport bench. They were making a substitution. Finally! Jamie thought. And then he saw the number they were holding up.

  At first Jamie couldn’t believe it. Thought they had made a mistake holding up his number, but the serious look on Porlock’s face told him this was no mistake. He wanted Jamie off.

  “You’re taking me off?” Jamie shouted across the pitch, his voice thundering with aggression and disappointment. “Why me?”

  Jamie was fuming. As he stormed past the dugout, he ripped off his Seaport Town shirt and chucked it angrily right at the feet of Raymond Porlock.

  “You know what you can do with that!” he shouted, spitting his words at Porlock.

  Almost as soon as he had done it, Jamie regretted it. Sometimes he couldn’t help it. The red mist descended and he said things without even knowing what was coming out of his mouth. He knew what he’d done was wrong but he’d been too angry to stop himself.

  Jamie kicked the door to the dressing room open and sat down.

  He shook his head.

  How had it come to this? Where had it all gone wrong? And what kind of footballer was he becoming?

  “One more chance, James,” said Raymond Porlock, who had gathered the whole Seaport squad together for a team meeting.

  “I mean it,” he continued, singling Jamie out in front of all the other players as if he were a naughty schoolboy.

  “One more strike and you’re out. I can’t put it any more simply than that. A football team is like a family. We’re all in it together. The players, the coaches, the fans. All of us, pulling in the same direction.

  “So we can’t allow one rotten apple into our barrel. Because if we do, soon enough, we’ll all be rotten to the core. We’ll all be mouldy, squelchy apples – and that is not what we want to become.

  “Are you a rotten apple, James? Is that what you are?”

  “No, Mr Porlock,” said Jamie, looking at the floor. “I’m not. And I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

  “Good,” said Porlock. “Then we can try to put the weekend’s little outburst behind us. Anyway, as it happens, the reason that I’ve called this meeting has absolutely nothing to do with that. As you all know, we’ve been struggling with getting the ball in the back of the old net recently, so I’ve done something about it . . . I’ve gone and bought myself a new striker.”

  All the Seaport players looked at each other. They were not expecting this.

  “I’ve gone back to my old mate, Harry Armstrong at Hawkstone,” Porlock continued, “and I’ve done a deal with him for one of their reserve team players that Harry was prepared to let go.

  “They were playing him at the back and I can see why – big lad, great in the air – but I reckon they’ve missed a trick with him. I reckon if you stick him up the other end, especially in this league, he can be the perfect centre forward. . .”

  It was at that moment that Jamie’s stomach lurched. He suddenly felt horribly, violently sick. His skin tightened and the acid rose within him. Somehow, he knew what was coming next. . .

  “The lad’s name is Dillon Simmonds.”

  Dillon Simmonds was the biggest enemy in Jamie’s life.

  He had been since Jamie’s first day at Kingfield School, when Dillon, the school bully, had singled Jamie out for “treatment”.

  He’d mocked Jamie for being really small and then, over the next few weeks, months and years, he’d done everything he could to make Jamie’s life a misery.

  He’d beaten Jamie up a few times and regularly stolen money from him, but worst of all was the way he’d teased Jamie. Continually. Mercilessly.

  “Just cos you’re too poor to get proper football boots!” he would say. And: “You’re such a saddo – no wonder your dad left you!”

  It had made Jamie feel like a piece of dirt. In the end, after Dillon had insulted Jamie so many times, even Jamie started to believe what Dillon was saying. He began to hate himself and his family for giving Dillon an excuse to torment him.

  To this day, Jamie still didn’t know why Dillon had done it. He knew Dillon had problems at home. But that was no excuse. It didn’t give him the right to go around bullying people like he did.

  They had hardly spoken a word to each other in the time they’d both been at Hawkstone because Jamie was in the first team and Dillon had been in the reserves.

  But now Dillon Simmonds was about to come back into Jamie’s life.

  Just when he least needed him. . .

  “Well, whaddaya know?” laughed Dillon, slapping Jamie painfully hard on the back before training the next day. He’d swaggered into Seaport Town like he owned the place. “Jamie Johnson, you follow me everywhere!”

  Jamie turned around to see that Dillon was holding out his hand to shake Jamie’s.

  Not that Jamie was going to fall for that old trick again. The amount of times Dillon
had pretended to shake Jamie’s hand in the playground and then either drawn it away at the last moment – to leave Jamie looking like a fool – or, worse still, had taken Jamie’s hand and crushed the knuckles together so hard that you could actually hear them crack.

  Jamie would never fall for that trick again. He would never shake Dillon Simmonds’ hand as long as they were both alive.

  “I was here first,” Jamie shot back, deliberately ignoring Dillon’s hand. “So how can I be the one following you?”

  “Just give it to me,” Dillon said as he and Jamie stood over the ball before kick-off. “Everyone knows you’ve lost it.”

  Jamie ground his teeth. It was true. Everyone thought he’d lost it.

  But Jamie knew it was all still there. Everything. The skill, the pace, the tricks. . .

  He still had it all.

  And now was the time to prove it.

  Jamie took the centre by knocking the ball into Dillon’s feet. Then, as soon as Dillon had touched the ball, Jamie nicked it back and immediately set off on a run.

  There were eleven players between him and the goal of his life.

  But Jamie didn’t care. He knew he could do this. He could go all the way himself. . .

  A step-over and he was past one defender, a burst of raw pace and he was through the middle of two other challenges as if they didn’t exist. Now a body-swerve and he was through to the edge of the area.

  The opposition was dissolving in front of Jamie, paving the way for him to score a wonder goal. Porlock was off his seat; the entire crowd stood in suspense, waiting to witness a potential moment of football history. . .

  Now a double drag-back to beat the last defender. A blur of electric skill and Jamie was past him, racing forward . . . until he suddenly found himself being jerked backwards as if by some magnetic current.

  Instead of powering on and lashing the ball home, he tumbled to the ground, screaming in frustration.

  The defender had grabbed Jamie’s shirt and yanked him down just outside the edge of the area.

  Jamie leapt up, like a boxer looking for a fight. Had he been allowed to finish off the goal, it would have been one of the best he’d ever scored. That chance had been stolen from him.

  But there was no way he was going to let anyone else take this free-kick. If he curled it right into the top corner it might still turn out to be his ticket back to the Premier L—

  “I’ll take the free-kick!” announced Dillon Simmonds, grabbing the ball and shoving Jamie forcefully out of the way. “I need the goals.”

  Jamie felt the anger lift from his chest into his arms. He felt the rage overtake him and, before he could stop himself, he was aiming a furious shove straight back in the direction of Dillon Simmonds.

  “Why do you need the goals more than me?!” Jamie roared as he lashed out. “It’s my free-kick!”

  He pushed at Dillon’s body with all his might and he was surprised at how light Dillon’s frame seemed. Too light. . .

  Immediately Jamie sensed that something was wrong. He’d got into enough tussles with Dillon over the years to know that this was not Dillon’s chest he was shoving.

  It was not Dillon Simmonds at all. It was the referee, who, without Jamie realizing, had placed himself between him and Dillon when tempers had started to flare. But with fury blinding him, Jamie had launched himself at the nearest person to him, assuming it was Dillon.

  With every bit of strength he had in his body, Jamie had just pushed the referee right in the chest.

  And now, almost in slow motion, the referee was desperately trying to stay on his feet. His arms were wheeling up into the air as he staggered backwards. But it was a losing battle; he looked as though he were roller skating on ice!

  It looked funny. Hilarious, even. As the ref’s legs finally buckled and he fell over, some of the players were even laughing.

  But when the ref hit the back of his head on the hard frozen ground, they stopped laughing. There was such a loud thud that the players knew it must have hurt. Badly.

  For a second, nothing happened. No one had ever seen anything like this happen before.

  Then, coming to his senses, Jamie rushed over to the ref to apologize.

  “Ref!” he shouted. “Sorry, mate. I didn’t know it was you, honest! Ref?”

  But the man in black was out cold. The physios from both teams had to prop him up and wipe his face with a wet sponge before he began to come back round.

  Jamie was in shock. He watched as the referee was hauled off the pitch on a stretcher. The poor man had no idea where he was. He looked as though someone had just woken him up from a coma.

  After a brief discussion on the touchline, the fourth official marched on to the pitch to take over the referee’s duties.

  And his very first action was to stride over to Jamie and instantly show him the red card.

  Jamie wanted to argue. He wanted to say that it wasn’t his fault; Dillon was the one who had started it. That he would never have pushed the referee on purpose. That this was all another one of Dillon’s plans to get him.

  But he knew there was no point. They were never going to change their minds. He kept his mouth shut and trudged slowly, silently off the pitch.

  Jamie Johnson had been sent off after exactly two minutes and thirty-one seconds.

  Shameful Assault on Referee Rocks the Football World

  The career of football’s former golden boy, Jamie Johnson, was hanging by a thread last night after the winger knocked out a referee.

  Johnson, on loan at Division 1 outfit Seaport Town from Premier League side Hawkstone United, lost his temper in yesterday’s match.

  After only two minutes, Johnson launched a senseless attack on referee Arthur Salcock, knocking the highly respected official unconscious.

  Johnson is set to be banned and fined by the football authorities, while his manager at Seaport, Raymond Porlock, also had strong words for the disgraced winger.

  “This is not acceptable. Full stop,” Porlock admitted. “Referees are the lifeblood of football. We need them more than they need us. It’ll be a long time before he pulls on a Seaport Town shirt again.”

  Jamie stared at the screen on his mobile in disbelief.

  He hadn’t wanted any of this. None of it. All he’d ever wanted was to play football.

  But now he’d been banned. When would he be allowed to kick a ball again?

  Although it only been four weeks, Jamie felt as though he hadn’t played football for years. Decades, even.

  Despite the fact that his ban would soon be over, Raymond Porlock had said that he still had no intention of picking Jamie for Seaport Town. He didn’t think Jamie was “mentally ready” to come back yet.

  Above everything else, Jamie missed the buzz. Nothing on earth felt as good as playing football.

  To stay fit, Jamie had been going for long runs by himself every day.

  He sprinted up and down the streets around his house, each day setting himself new targets to keep pushing himself to the limit.

  Sometimes, like today, he even went down to the main road so that he could run on the pavement and race against the cars.

  Jamie was sprinting as fast as he could, trying to keep pace with an old Mercedes, when he suddenly stopped. Something had caught his eye.

  He’d seen a massive poster on the street. It was of Mattheus Bertorelli, posing, advertising a very expensive brand of sunglasses.

  Just seeing Bertorelli’s smarmy, smug, cheating face had sent a spear of pain and anger through Jamie. Burning with frustration, he started to tear down the poster there and then. He wanted to get rid of it.

  Soon, as he ripped away at the paper, the poster hidden underneath began to become visible.

  When he saw it, Jamie froze. Shocked.

  The poster buried underneath was the one for
Nemesis football boots. As worn by Jamie Johnson.

  Jamie stared at his own image.

  The image of Jamie Johnson – yesterday’s hero.

  Jamie felt like going home and had just taken a shortcut through the estate when – WHACK! – he was smashed in the face by something hard and wet.

  He looked down to see possibly the ugliest old tennis ball that he had ever come across. The ball was completely bald, shorn of all the green fur that had once covered it. Now it simply looked like a bouncy brown plastic potato!

  Jamie picked it up and was just about to send it skyward with a huge volley when a voice called out to him.

  “Oi! Mate! That’s my ball! Chuck it back here, will ya!”

  Jamie looked around to see a kid, probably no more than ten years old, scampering towards him.

  Jamie smiled as the boy got nearer.

  “You looking for this?” said Jamie, holding the ball just too high for the boy to reach.

  “Oi! Give it back!” barked the boy, desperately trying to jump high enough to snatch it back out of Jamie’s hand.

  The boy was really tiny. Only came up to Jamie’s hip. His tracksuit bottoms were frayed at the knee and at the heel, and even though it was freezing, he was just wearing a small T-shirt, which looked as if it had never been washed. The kid also had a shaved head and gleaming little stud earrings in both his ears.

  “OK!” announced the kid, finally giving up on trying to get the ball out of Jamie’s hands. “I’ll play you for the ball, then! I’ll smash you!”

  “You want to play me?” smiled Jamie. He liked this kid. He reminded him of someone. “And you think you’ll smash me?”

  “You best believe it,” said the kid. “I’m gonna teach you a lesson!”