Man of the Match (12 page)

 

 

It was as though Jamie was playing in the game himself.

He couldn't stand still. He was jumping up and down and running around the room.

He was watching Seaport Town play. The game was being shown live on TV because, if they won, they would go into the play-offs.

Now the camera was focusing in on Raymond Porlock, who was bellowing instructions from the sidelines. His voice was so loud that you could even hear it on the TV!

“There's no bloomin' grass in the sky!” he was yelling. “So keep the ball on the ground!”

Jamie laughed. He thought back to the time when, one day after training at Seaport, as he was leaving, he'd seen Porlock standing by the side of one of the pitches shouting at the very top of his voice.

“PUSH UP!” he was yelling. “COOONCENTRATE!!!!”

But when Jamie had looked out on to the pitch, he'd seen that no one was there. The entire pitch was empty.

Had Porlock really gone round the bend this time? Jamie had wondered. Had he gone as mad as sixty boxes of frogs all put together?

“Mr Porlock!” Jamie had said to him. “Who are you shouting at? There's no one there!”

Porlock had pretended to look shocked at first, and then he'd smiled at Jamie.

“When you step out over the white line, James, I'm pretty much helpless,” he'd said. “There's only one way that I can affect a match while it's happening – and that's by shouting at you lot! Telling you what to do! But shouting is like anything else; there's a technique to it . . . and what I'm doing now is practising that technique.”

“So . . . you're . . . practising shouting?”

“Got it in two, James!”

 

Now, on the TV, Seaport were attacking! Dillon Simmonds had laid the ball off to Stuart Cribbins, who was racing through . . . Cribbins was one on one. . . He drilled the ball towards the goal and it beat the goalkeeper . . . but then hit the post!

But that was not it! The ball rebounded so hard that it smashed Stuart Cribbins flat in the face and then bounced back into the goal!

“Ohhhh! You little beauty!” Jamie roared, sprinting around his room in circles like someone doing a rain dance. “Go on, Stuey Cribbins, my son! Smash it in with your face, why don't you! Don't matter how they go in as long as they go in!”

 

 

 

Jamie couldn't wipe the smile from his face.

Seaport Town had made just it in to the play-offs!

On the TV, Jamie could see the whole squad huddled in the centre circle celebrating. Their pride and passion shone out.

It was funny, Jamie thought to himself, how football teams reflected the spirit of their manager. Jamie knew now that he had misjudged Raymond Porlock when he'd first arrived at Seaport. He'd thought that Porlock was mad. He wasn't. He was just mad about football. . .

Jamie's phone started ringing.

He looked at the name flashing up on his screen and he smiled.

He let it ring a couple more times – didn't want to look too eager – and then he answered it just before it was about to go to voicemail.

“Hey,” he said.

“JJ!” said Jack. “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!”

“What for?” asked Jamie.

“For what you said at the press conference today, stupid! The editor at the paper worked out that it was me who tipped off the police! Now they want me to write a massive article for them AND they've asked me to go and work there full-time when I finish my A levels! I'm so excited! I'm going to be a proper journalist! Thank you, JJ!”

“I didn't do anything, Jack,” said Jamie. “You're the one who did all the hard work! And you still haven't told me how you did it! You know you're amazing, Jack?”

“Don't be so cheesy!” snapped Jack. She always told Jamie when he overstepped the mark. “Oh, all right, then. Go on, you can be cheesy. Just this once!”

And then they laughed. They had always made each other laugh like this, right back to when Jamie used to sing and make fart noises by putting his hand under his armpit and squeezing it up and down like a bagpipe!

“No, I mean it,” insisted Jamie. “If you hadn't believed me – trusted me – about Bertorelli and then done all that digging . . . well . . . I don't know . . . I guess I'd still be at Seaport and he'd still be—”

“Hey, don't sweat it, Jamie. What are friends for, right?”

“Right,” said Jamie.

And then a silence fell down the phone line. It sat there, waiting. . .

“Jack?” There was a stammer in Jamie's voice and his stomach was beginning to ache.

“Yeah?”

What are you worried about?
Jamie asked himself.
Just get on with it!

“No . . . it's nothing . . . don't worry about it. . .”

Coward! Why am I such a coward?!

“Come on, Jamie . . . spit it out, will you?”

“No . . . I was just wondering if . . . after the game tomorrow . . . I didn't know whether you wanted to . . . I dunno . . . maybe we could—”

“You can pick me up at eight,” said Jack, putting Jamie out of his misery. “
If
you do the business for the Hawks tomorrow!”

And then she was gone. Jack was never a great one for goodbyes.

Jamie looked at his phone and shook his head. How was it she always knew what he was thinking?

Premier League Table
WITH ONE MATCH TO PLAY

 

 

Jamie put his phone back in his pocket. That text would have made his granddad, Mike, so proud.

In many ways, Jamie felt as though his football career was for Mike as much as for himself. Jamie had got all his talent from Mike so now it was his job to make the most of that talent.

Jamie would be playing for both of them today.

 

Jamie looked out of the car window at all the kids pressed up against the glass. They had been waiting outside his house since this morning, just trying to catch a glimpse of him.

And now, as he was leaving to head to the ground, they were there to see him off. As Doug started up the engine, Jamie suddenly had a flashback to when he had been one of those kids. He remembered how excited he'd been whenever he'd seen a real footballer, live in the flesh.

“Just hang on for a minute, will you, Doug?” Jamie said. “I'll be back in a sec.”

Then Jamie Johnson got back out of the car.

The kids let out a cheer and gathered around him as though he were the Pied Piper.

“Score a goal for us today, Jamie!” they said.

“Are you going to win the league for us?” they asked.

“Can we have your shirt after the game?!” they joked.

Jamie signed every single one of their autographs. He knew that the next Jamie Johnson was in there somewhere.

“Are you ready to go?” Doug asked Jamie as he got back in the car.

Jamie closed his eyes and breathed in deeply. Today was the day of all days. Hawkstone United's chance to win the Premier League.

“As ready as I'll ever be.”

 

“Let's have a look at the paper,” Jamie said to Archie Fairclough while he was getting a massage to loosen his muscles ahead of the game.

Archie shifted around uncomfortably on his feet.

“Papers ain't come in today, Jamie,” he said. “Postal strike or something.”

“Archie, I'm a pretty bad liar – but you must be the worst liar in the world!” laughed Jamie. “You can't even look me in the eye! Come on, give it here! I know it's a big game, but I'm not nervous. I promise.”

“Gaffer's orders,” explained Archie, holding his ground. “You're not supposed to look at the papers.”

“Archie, either
you
give me the paper or I go outside and get one off the fans. Your call. . .”

Archie considered his options for a couple of moments and then, with extreme reluctance, handed Jamie the newspaper.

 

“Thank you,” said Jamie, a little sarcastically. Then, instinctively, he turned the paper over to read the back page.

“What's he doing reading that rubbish?!” shouted Harry Amstrong, storming into the massage room and ripping the paper out of Jamie's stunned hands. “I told you not to let him read it – under
any
circumstances!”

But it was too late.

Jamie had read every word.