Water Bowser Consequences 2

Early Saturday lunchtime saw Bill and Davy catch the bus across the town to the football club. Bill had told Davy that he no longer had the van as he had handed his notice in at work after an argument with the boss. Davy knew different but had nodded. He also chose not to comment on Bill’s assertion that he would soon find another job.

It was chaos in the club house. Fathers and sons were milling around chatting to each other whilst an extremely red-faced man in a track suit (a man they all came to know as ‘coach’) tried to shout order into the situation whilst standing on top of a table. Bill immediately clocked two of the boys he had apprehended on the building site (was it only last week?) and then, with a horrible sinking feeling, he spotted that clever dick lawyer, the father of one of them.

‘I’ll come back at 4.’

‘Please Dad, please stay, I don’t know any of these boys, there’s no one here from my school.’

Bill reluctantly agreed, acknowledging to himself that however bad this was it was nothing to the shame and recriminations that would follow a couple of hours in the Queen’s.

The boys were divided into groups based on what they thought their best position was – goalies, backs, midfielders and strikers, and set to work doing practices and drills under the eyes of other coaches. Bill was relieved that neither of the two boys he’d seen were in the defenders group with Davy and was pleased to see that Clever Dick was away at the other end of the field with another group. He enjoyed watching Davy working on the routines – with and without the ball. He was tall, strong and muscular, with the makings of a good centre half in old money (red faced coach had managed to bellow out that following recent trends the club was adopting a 433 system for all teams) but he also had skill on the ball and the timing of his tackling was impressive.

After an hour the whole group got back together again to suck on oranges and drink water whilst the coaches went into a conflab to pick two teams of eleven for a trial match, 20 mins each way. Davey was in team A whilst Eb and J were in team B.

Bill positioned himself as far away on the opposite touchline from Clever Dick as he could and watched. Inevitably the play was scrappy but a number of boys showed considerable potential. Davy dealt calmly and comfortably with any attacking threat that came near him – most of which came from Eb in the opposing midfield passing to J who was fast and demonstrated he had a good right foot with one shot hitting a goal post. The game, standing at nil: nil was ambling  to a rather muted conclusion when Eb, with the ball at his feet in the centre circle looked up to see J peel away from the other central defender in Davy’s defence. Instantly Eb struck the ball over a couple of heads into the flying J’s path. It was almost the perfect pass, the sort that Eb had been delivering for years to J in playground football, but it wasn’t quite perfect and on such fine margins do events often unfold.

The ball was perhaps a yard too far in front of J, who was arrowing in on the goal and the likely hapless goalkeeper. That yard was all the encouragement that Davy needed as he hared across field to intercept the attack. The two boys hurtled towards inevitable collision, neither seeming to have any focus apart from the ball. As J stretched to take the ball under control, Davey slid across and just in front of him, his toe just connecting enough of the ball to divert it out of J’s path – at least that’s what Bill meant when he found himself in the middle of the field shouting across the two prone boys at Clever Dick ‘but he got the ball!’

Had the game been on Match of the Day the commentators might have agreed that Davey had just about got the ball – but that he had also taken a lot of J with it. Unfortunately the game wasn’t on Match of the Day so no one had the advantage of endless slow-motion replays or a calm studio discussion about whether the tackle merited a booking …. or even a sending off.

There was not much calm from the touchline Dads who saw J go somersaulting over Davey’s outstretched leg, landing with an audible thump on his back. Both boys lay prone on the ground. There was a collective roar of approbation directed at Davey ‘Foul!’ ‘Foul!’ ‘Disgraceful! as two Dads raced from opposite sides of the pitch to converge on the boys – but they were beaten to it by Eb, who it has to be said, showed little composure himself, spitting out a litany of swearing that a boy of his age should simply not have known at Davey, who had now managed to get on his hands and knees.

Clever Dick pulled Eb away to add his own two penn’orth

‘That’s dirty, dangerous play, you could have broken his leg!’ and then, in exasperation as he looked up to see an unwelcomingly familiar face in front of him, ‘Oh it’s you.’

The two dads proceeded to have a short conversation that covered such issues as fair play, reckless deliberate tackles and, it has to be said, taking the piss. Coach stepped between them and suggested that they both calm down and that this was not seemly behaviour in front of children who were learning how to behave on a football pitch.

Meanwhile Davey had extracted himself from under the torrent of words and had gone over to J and helped him to his feet.

‘Sorry,’ he said sheepishly, ‘I didn’t mean to catch you, are you OK?’

‘I’m fine …… just winded  …. I think,’ gasped J, then grinned, ‘I’ve never been tackled like that before.’

‘Sorry, I was a bit late.’

‘So was I …..’ again he grinned, ‘Eb put just a bit too much on the ball didn’t he?’

‘You got there quicker than I expected, you’re really fast.’

J held out his hand ‘You got the ball ….’

Davey’s expression at last changed from shock and worry to the beginnings of a smile as he shook the proffered hand.

They were interrupted by three large blasts of a whistle and Coach shouting ‘OK everyone, trial over, you’ll receive letters in the post about playing for the club,’ then as a bit of an afterthought, ‘Oh …. Er ….. thank you all for turning up ….. you’ve all worked really hard ….. thank you.’

Clever Dick started to walk away with J and Eb when Coach stopped them, ‘Wait a minute I want to see you three boys in my office ….. with your parents.’

It was a glum little group that followed Coach back across two playing fields to the club house. Two grown men feeling somewhat ashamed by their behaviour (Eb’s dad wasn’t there, Clever Dick was acting in loco parentis) and three boys who feared that their chances of playing for the Town had diminished to zero.

‘Sorry about the argument,’ began Bill once they were inside the office.

Clever Dick nodded and sighed.

‘Should think so,’ said Coach dismissively, ‘Now let’s talk about you three.’

‘I was late.’

‘I shouldn’t have stretched for the ball, he was always favourite.’

‘Sorry about the swearing.’

Coach took a long hard look at them. ‘I like passion, I like speed and ball control and,’ he smiled directly at Davey, ‘I like robust defending.’

Five looked at one uncomprehendingly.

‘You’re going to be the spine of the team; defence, midfield and attack, we just need to find a good goalie, none were up to much today…… oh and we need a provisional captain, how about you son?’ he looked straight at Davey, ‘You organized a poor defence well today and I like a captain who can see what’s going on from the back.’

Five remained silent, things were moving rather fast and they hadn’t really come to terms yet with the fact that they weren’t all going to get a bollocking.

‘Letters in the post,’ concluded Coach, ‘see you next Saturday for training, first match against Hockley in a fortnight.’