Shoot to Win (10 page)

 

 

As the Kingfield boys made their way to the dressing room, their opponents, Breswell School, were just arriving.

The first thing that everyone noticed was their height; all the Breswell players were small, and some were even tiny.

Dillon made sure that he barged into practically every one of them as they went past. He wanted them to feel how strong he was.

“Anyone seen Breswell?” he shouted, towering above them. “All I can see is this bunch of midgets! We want a
proper
game!”

Some of the Breswell players were getting wound up but their coach quickly ushered them into their dressing room. “Give your answers on the pitch,” he told them as they filed past him.

*

“OK,” said Hansard, clapping his hands together as he got ready to send his team out for the big match.

“Today is your opportunity to win a Cup Final,” he announced. “You will never get a better opportunity than this . . . But I only want winners out there, so if you don't think you're going to win, don't bother leaving this dressing room.”

He let the silence hang for a couple of seconds.

“Good,” he said. “Now get out there and win this game!”

“Come on!” the Kingfield boys shouted, banging their fists against the wall as they grabbed their shirts from the kitbag. The school had had new ones made especially for the Final.

Jamie couldn't help but let the excitement in the dressing room envelop him too.

Jamie picked up his shirt and felt its soft material.

 

 

“I'll be here all afternoon, lads,” said the photographer from the
Advertiser
, snapping away furiously as the Kingfield boys came out of the tunnel and ran towards the pitch.

“If you want to buy any stills, get your dads to call the office.”

Jamie's heart shuddered. His dad – Jamie had invited him to come and watch the match! What would he think if he turned up and saw Jamie was only a sub?

He'd think his son was rubbish. He'd forget trying to get Jamie a deal with a professional club. He might even take off again.

Jamie couldn't allow that to happen. It was only now, with his dad back in his life, that he'd realized how much he'd missed him all these years . . . how much he needed him.

Jamie understood that there was no alternative; he
had
to get himself on to that pitch today. Now he just needed to work out how.

 

 

“And welcome to Kingfield School!” boomed the PA announcer as Kingfield took to the Phoenix Park pitch.

“Yeah! Go on Kingfield!” responded the crowd.

Jamie turned around to see there were about three hundred people in the stands to watch the game. It was by far the biggest crowd he'd ever played – or rather been a substitute – in front of.

He looked to see if he could spot his dad or his mum and Jeremy but, with everyone jumping up and down, it was impossible.

Now both sides were on the pitch, warming up. If Jamie were out there, he and Ollie would be spraying long passes to each other.

The tension was mounting as the referee called both captains to the centre circle to toss the coin.

On the sidelines, Jamie bent down to touch the pitch. It felt perfect. He picked up a couple of blades of grass and rolled them between his thumb and his fingers. Then he stood up and released them.

As he watched the blades flutter to the ground in the hot, windless summer air, Jamie made a wish inside his head. He hadn't done that for a very long time.

 

“Over here, Jamie!”

Mike had somehow managed to get himself down to the side of the pitch. He was standing next to the corner flag.

As Jamie wandered towards him, the referee put his whistle to his mouth and blew to get the game under way.

Mike must have seen Jamie's face drop because he put his arm around his grandson and said: “Don't worry, JJ. You'll get on and, when you do, you'll be the best player on that pitch.”

 

 

Jamie looked on from the sidelines as Ollie slid in and won the first tackle. The midfielder instinctively launched a long ball into the channel for Ashish Khan to chase.

Hansard had drilled the tactic into them over and over again. It had worked against Oak Hall in the Semi-Final but, as soon as Ash and the Breswell defenders got into a race, it was clear the Breswell players were just as quick as him. Ash couldn't get to the ball.

That was a shock. Ash was the second-fastest player in the Kingfield squad. Only Jamie was faster.

The Breswell goalkeeper collected the ball and threw it out to his full-back. Then the defenders began to play the ball between themselves. They had no intention of letting Kingfield get the ball back.

“Let's get into these midgets!” Dillon demanded angrily.

But it wasn't as simple as that. The Kingfield players sprinted forward and put as much pressure on the ball as they could but it didn't make any difference; Breswell just passed faster. They never panicked.

Everything that Breswell did was one-touch. Pass and go. Receive and release. The Kingfield players couldn't get near them. They were being toyed with.

“This lot know exactly what they're going to do with the ball before they receive it,” Mike said, nudging Jamie. “That's the sign of a good team.”

 

Soon fifteen minutes had gone and Kingfield had still hardly had a touch of the ball. Even when they did get it, they just punted it aimlessly into the channels for Breswell to reclaim.

“Work harder!” Hansard yelled at his team. He was going red in the face and was getting more frustrated by the second.

Jamie smiled ruefully to himself. The sad thing was, he knew how to make things better for his team. If he could get on that pitch, he could change things; turn the game around.

But, even though he was only standing on the touchline, he may as well have been standing on the North Pole. That's how far away from the action he felt.

Jamie had his face pressed up against the window of the game. Even if he shouted at the top of his voice, no one would hear.

 

 

It wasn't until twenty-five minutes into the game that Kingfield managed to win their first corner.

Finally, it was a break from all the defending and chasing that they had been forced to do and it gave Dillon the chance to come up from the back. As he chugged into the Breswell penalty area, it was clear how much taller he was than everyone else. If they could find him with the corner, he'd have a great chance of getting a header in on goal.

Jamie was the regular corner-taker, so when he saw his replacement, Tom Walker, raise both hands into the air as he stepped up to fire in the ball, Jamie knew exactly what that meant – the corner was going to the far post.

Sure enough, Walker whipped it in, hard and fast to the far post. Dillon fought his way through the mass of Breswell defenders towards the ball; none of them were strong enough to stop him. He dived forward, full length, through a flurry of raised boots, stretching every muscle in his body towards the ball, meeting it with a diving header towards the goal.

The crowd in the stands held their collective breath, Jamie stood on his tiptoes to try and see what was happening, then THUMP, the ball smacked against the outside of the post. It bounced away for a goal-kick. Dillon had missed. Just.

The Kingfield players held their heads in their hands. Six inches – that's how far they had been from taking the lead.

“Unlucky!” Hansard shouted from the sidelines, clapping his hands. “That's more like it.”

As the players dispersed from the penalty area, only Dillon was left in the box. He was still lying on the ground. At first it looked as though he was just upset he hadn't managed to score. But when the referee started frantically blowing his whistle, it was clear that there was a problem. Something must have happened when Dillon went for the header.

“Can we get a medic on here, please?” shouted the referee. “He's done something to his thumb. I think it might be dislocated.”

Dillon was sitting up now, cradling his left hand. Even from where he was standing, Jamie could see that Dillon's thumb was poking out backwards from the rest of his hand. It looked as if it had been stuck on the wrong way.

“He don't need no medics – he ain't a wimp!” said a man, marching on to the pitch. Almost as soon as he saw him, with his big, burly frame and his nose broken like a boxer's, Jamie knew exactly who he was.

The man shoved the referee out of way and grabbed Dillon's hand.

“Let me have a look at that,” he ordered.

He took one look at it and said: “Right!”

Then he did something that made Jamie's whole body squirm; the man forced Dillon's thumb right back into its socket. Jamie thought he could even hear the noise of the bone snapping back into place.

“Ahhh! Dad!!!” squealed Dillon, turning his head away.

“Oh, stop moaning, you baby,” said his dad, walking back off the pitch. “Wouldn't have happened if you'd have scored.”