by Frank Bogna
Yellow card please.
What, no yellow?
‘Free kick to the Unic….’ he called as the crowd’s cheers drowned his voice.
Sofie took the kick and tried to curve it into the goal. Bang! It hit the top of the crossbar and bounced out. It was still pretty fancy.
We put in a solid effort for the rest of the game, but a goal was not to be. Full time and the score was 0-0. But hey, the Mighty Marchflies was the toughest team in the league.
Not good enough for Hammo. He went into an embarrassing rant and rave in the middle of the pitch.
‘Oh, well that’s it, it’s all over.’
‘No premiership.’
‘Stuck in the middle of the table.’
‘I might as well leave the team now. Find another one that’s winning more games.’
The other Soccerheads just looked at him. No one was game to stop him.
‘You should have scored Sunwell. With that chip. And you Sofie. I did my job in defence,’ he said, pointing to his chest. ‘I kept that ball away from Giorgio.’
I had to step in. Step up and take a stand. Everyone else was just standing back, speechless.
‘Hammo, you’re not making any sense. Doesn’t matter if we don’t always win,’ I reasoned.
‘Oh bugger off Sammy. You wouldn’t know, ya newbie,’ he shouted back as he stormed off, going straight to his folks, belting out ‘I hate losing and so does Dad. I should find another teeeeaaamm.’
Ouch. I didn’t feel so good after that lashing.
My best friend had just told me I was useless.
Yep, basically, I just didn’t know anything because I’m a newbie.
Snap out of it Sammy. You can’t let it get to you, I said to myself.
The girls were right. Hammo can go nutso. Definitely on some other planet.
Hammo had never done that before.
A brain snap.
That’s what it was. His brain snapped in half.
I was a newbie, but I knew something about winning and losing.
I could’ve just told him to go jump, that I won’t hang around him any more. Ddddhhhh. That won’t work when we’re both playing in defence!
Anyway, real friends don’t do that. A real friend has to sort out the nutso in the other one.
I had to “un-nutso” him.
Mr C got us together for our end of game briefing, not seeing anything of what just happened.
‘Today, you played like champions,’ he said quite proudly.
‘The score is not important to me, but how you play, and you played hard until the end, never giving up.’
‘You see there with the dive; if you do the wrong thing, sooner or later it will come back and bite you.’
‘Yeah, and the Marchflies got bitten and we got the free kick,’ said Buck, feeling a little bit happy that the referees’ decision went his way.
‘Where’s Hammo?’ asked Mr C, scanning the team.
‘Oh, his folks wanted to leave early,’ I butted in to stop anyone blabbering the real story.
I didn’t know what to do about Hammo, how to un-nutso him.
Mr C gave me a pat on the shoulder as I walked past, saying ‘You’re doing well Sammy. We might keep you on yet,’ winking at me as I looked up at him.
‘Ttthhhanks Mr C,’ I stuttered.
Whhoaaghhh. I must have been getting better.
Dad came over and congratulated me on some good defending. That was the best part in all the confusion. Dad telling me I did OK.
‘Well done champ. And your defender mates too,’ he added, looking at Rado as we neared our car.
As we started driving home, I had to tell him about Hammo first, explaining what he said and how he had stormed off.
‘Just let him go Sammy. He’ll cool down. He won’t leave the team. He’ll come back and say sorry. Hang in there Sammy.’
Silence. Looking out the window, we passed some kid hanging and swinging on monkey bars in a playground.
How appropriate! Hang in there.
I sure hope he comes back Dad.
That night I looked at the soccer posters above my bed, wondering what other big star soccer players have done in the past when they get called something bad by their own team mates.
Did they ignore it or lash out?
What would Tim Cahill have done?
Hang in there Sammy.
We are the Soccerheads.
6.The Rotten Roosters
Brace yourself. Carnival day is a long day, so this is a long story. I love carnivals because I’m with my Soccerhead mates all day. Three games against different clubs, all for a special carnival trophy.
Hammo got a lift with us that morning to the carnival; that is with Mum, Sally and I. Ruff came along too.
I reckon Hammo still wanted to win something after all, and changed his mind about what he said at the Marchflies game, you know wanting to find a new team. He never said sorry for calling me a newbie. I suppose I just had to suck it up with that one. That’s what my mum says.
‘Suck it up, Sammy.’
As we opened up the car doors on arrival, there was a putrid stench in the air ten times worse than the maggots in my socks.
I thought it was Hammo, you know bottling it up in the car because he didn’t want to upset my Mum, and letting a good one rip as soon as he got out.
‘OOOHHHH Hammo, that’s gross,’ I said as I looked across at him, but his face was screwed up just like mine, and the smell was everywhere. Hammo doesn’t mind his own stench but doesn’t cope so well with other stenches. Mum was not impressed!
Opening the car door, the pong was everywhere.
Ruff didn’t seem to mind the smell at all. I needed a filter against my nostrils. Fast!
Grabbing my soccer socks out of my bag, a pair that hadn’t been washed for three weeks, I stuck them against my nostrils. Ahhh! Instant relief. I hoped the wind would pick up real soon. No wonder the host team were called ‘rotten.’
Just then I noticed that we had parked next to a large skip; you know one of those big steel bins that a garbage truck comes to empty… and it was full of rubbish that probably hadn’t been emptied in weeks.
The oozing stench that was unbearable. However, I’ll give you a hint now of what was to follow: that bin was our saviour that day, helping us to victory.
We all gathered under our team tent as Mrs C passed around our new shirts, which only had our number on the back. They looked pretty fancy.
‘Ok team, we play the Roosters first, and then the Chirpy Chicks. The afternoon game is against the Slippery Snakes. They are shortened halves; only fifteen minutes each way.’
‘Whew, no Marchflies. We can do without them,’ exclaimed Bella. She never says much, which told me that something special was going to happen with her today …she just seemed super keen.
‘I’ve never heard of that last team, Mr C. Where are they from?’ I inquired. You need to always study the opposition, work out their strong points and their weaknesses.
Mr C explained. ‘They’re from Serpentville, way over the other side of town. They’re not in our regular competition but might be next year.’
I looked across at Rado. That was the third gulp of water I had seen him take since Mr C started talking, and we hadn’t even started warming up yet. He must have been real thirsty.
Some questions were going through my mind.
Which formation did they use?
Did they have a zippy striker?
Could their goalie dive?
Were their wingers fast and good with both feet?
Did any midfielders use some fancy footwork?
We knew zilch about them.
Great!
‘OOOHHHH’ that stench suddenly interrupted our discussion. It was Ruff, and he had jumped INSIDE the bin.
A collective chorus of ‘Ooohhhh Ruuuufffff,’ came from the whole team. It was rank!
Ruff knew there was trouble, and he wa
s in the middle of it. With his tail between his legs, he disappeared into the distance, way past the other end of the field. It was not going to be a pleasant trip home!
‘Now the winners work off a ladder, not a round robin,’ Mr C continued, twitching his nostrils to fight the lingering stench as he spoke.
This was a new frontier for us Soccerheads.
‘What does a ladder mean?’ asked Sunwell.
‘Well, it’s all about winning your games, but having a good goal difference. We want to score lots of goals and not too many against us because that affects your goal difference and drags you down on the ladder, even if another team wins the same number of games as you. Each round goes on a scoreboard.’
Rado took another few swigs of water, his hands trembling a bit as he put the bottle to his mouth. Now I knew what it was. He was nervous. I think it must have been his first carnival ever.
‘See them over there,’ he said pointing to a number of scoreboards with team names on there.
‘That will get updated after every round.’
I calculated our workload for the day. Three games in one day! Ninety minutes of game time. That was like tidying my room ten times over! I was exhausted just thinking about it!
So, defence was the key here. We had no captain but someone needed to take charge, to get the team together for a special tactics talk before the start. We had to be organised. I told myself I would be the one to do that, even if I got the wobbly legs thing going. It was my job.
After we laced up, I mustered our defenders Hammo, Rado, Giorgio and Buck to go over and check out the scoreboard. Just in that moment, I thought of how we were a team, and all of us needed to include each other. Izzy and Bella were next to us and I invited them too.
‘I must go,’ said Rado with a pained look on his face.
‘Yes Rado, we’re going now,’ I confirmed trying to move him along with us.
‘No. No. I must go … I am busting … you know chhsshhhh,’ he exclaimed in an exasperated tone.
‘Oh, the toilet,’ I confirmed. ‘OK Rado, we’ll see you over there,’ as he ran off to the toilet with a cross legged gait. Poor Rado; all that water!
We stood in front of the scoreboard. I couldn’t quite figure out how it was going to work with all those numbers.
Bella led the conversation. This scoreboard business was right up her alley.
‘Mr C said we have to not let goals through. That means the goal difference column has to have a plus in front of the number, and we need to have the highest number of points in the points column.’
‘How did you know that?’ I asked.
‘My Mum and Dad follow the EPL competition on the web and TV,’ Bella continued. ‘They know all the teams in England and in the A-League competition too. My Dad’s in a soccer tipping competition at his work and he’s winning.’
‘Last season, that’s how one team won the premiership, on goal difference even though the two top teams had the same points.’
Bella was teaching us some interesting stuff. Pretty fancy. I had to ask my Mum about it.
‘We’ll need to play a pressing game this whole carnival,’ she said in a self-assured tone.
‘Hey, what!’ responded Buck immediately.
‘What’s that mean? Press who? Press what?’
Bella giggled.
‘No silly. It means that all you defenders play away from the goal line, up near the circle. As soon as the other team gets the ball, go in ready for a tackle. That way we get the ball sooner.’
‘Toooo much rrrunning forrr me,’ Giorgio worked out all too quickly.
‘Yes you have to run a lot more but we will have the ball more often,’ Bella reasoned.
‘OK, we’re in. Thoccerheads unite,’ replied Buck through a gap in his teeth, all of us nodding in approval.
We all regrouped near the field, warmed up and got into our huddle, led by a refreshed Rado.
It was Rado’s turn for some words.
‘Use your head,’ is all he said. Yep, use your head. I think meant that we should use our brains, rather than everybody heading the ball as he does.
I’m not so keen on heading too much, because it gives me a big headache. Man, that ball can be hard! I’d prefer to practice a thousand kicks with my left foot than five headers.
Time to get on with the carnival.
#
First carnival game.
Opponent: Rotten Roosters
Overall performance: Sensational. We were in cruise control.
Defence: Never run so hard
Key highlight: Pressing, led by Bella.
Rooster’s weakness: Leaky defence.
Best player: Bella, because she read everything beautifully.
Most bored player: Giorgio due to a lack of action at his end.
Final score: 3-0 to us, with Izzy scoring her first ever hat trick.
Best supporter: Ruff, congratulating Izzy with three ‘yip,yip yips’ from a distance.
#
We started our first game late, so we hardly had a break before our second game against the Chirpy Chicks. Their name was a dead giveaway.
As we lined up from the kick off, all of them were talking. They must have been the chattiest bunch of kids we had ever played against. Yak, yak, yak.
#
Second Carnival game.
Opponent: Chirpy Chicks.
Key highlight: Bella’s lofting shot inside the far post (keeper talking to a teammate and didn’t see the ball coming)
Overall performance: Solid, but we should have done better.
Key bit I won’t ever forget: Yak, Yak, Yak. Oh man they could talk.
Lowpoint of the game: Their equaliser in the dying seconds of the game from a curly corner, an unbelievable ball that just kept swirling and spinning, finally finding the top far corner of the post.
#
‘Great pressing game Uni’s. Who hatched that idea?’ Mr C asked with some words of encouragement and praise.
Bella didn’t own up. I think she preferred to stay in the shadows a bit. I piped up and had to say something for her.
‘It was Bella, Mr C. She gave us some ideas when we were at the scoreboard.’
‘Great stuff Bella,’ confirmed Mr C as he congratulated her.
I went to check the scoreboard with Izzy and Bella, thinking we might be on top.
Not so.
We were coming second as the Slippery Snakes had won two games and we had drawn our second game. They had scored seven goals and we had only scored four!
Things were nearly going south. That’s when you go downhill.
We all stood there.
Thinking.
Thinking.
Thinking.
That’s OK,’ stated Bella confidently. ‘We can win this.’
‘A few more goals should do it,’ said Izzy in her soft voice.
‘Oh sure,’ I added, trying not to sound wimpy.
We had to beat the Slippery Snakes in the next game to win the carnival, and if we lost, the scoreboard was telling us we could even come third!
Before we knew it, Mr C was calling us together for our final team talk. We heard about defence, pressing, Sunwell shielding the ball and about how the girls were scoring all the goals.
The girls?
‘Girls?’ muttered Hammo under his breath, grating and grinding his teeth. Hammo doesn’t like getting beaten. Girls scoring more than the boys was even worse.
I wasn’t worried, more pleased than anything that some of us Soccerheads were having a blinder. That’s when you play a really good game.
‘Keep it up Unicorns. Don’t worry about the score,’ Mr C said as we took to the field.
#
Final carnival game. First half.
Opponent: Slippery Snakes
First half performance: Good, but could be better.
Frustrating bits: Buck getting swamped with every touch, Hammo tackled by two defenders each time he was ready fo
r a strike, Sunwell constantly marked.
Key highlight: There were none.
Snake’s weakness: We hadn’t worked it out yet.
Who wins?: I can’t tell you yet, it’s only half time and no one has scored.
#
At half time Mr C was almost lost for words.
‘This team is pressing as well as you guys. You’ll have to split them up a bit more. Now try this.’
We all sat closer, waiting for the magic trick that could win us the game.
‘First of all, remember we are all in this together. Play as one unit. Play as a team.’
That’s the easy part. What else?
‘Remember your game against Jabba’s team in training? You used many small passes. Tik, Tik, Tik. Well, try that but don’t move the ball forward too quickly. Pass back a bit, use your triangles and draw those midfielders and defenders out.’
Not as easy as it sounded, but Mr C had us pumped.
#
Final carnival game. Second half.
Opponent: Slippery Snakes (Dduuugghh)
Second half performance: Unbelievable.
Highlight: Short passing and back passing
Winning move: My tic-tic pass to Bella, who then scored with a well-placed ball. Goalkeeper too slow to react.
Worst part of the game: Ruff’s stench.
What won us the game: Ruff’s stench.
Explanation: Ruff on the sideline; wet and shaggy looking with bits of mud and fur poking out sideways like spikes on a Christmas tree.
Ruff sat behind the opposition’s goal and shook his stinky mass of muck with doggy shake. The goalkeeper was sprayed with a good dose of rubbish and doggy dirt, just as Bella scored.
Final score: One nil to us.
The winning goal came in a flash, in that nanosecond when you think the game will go into extra time or even penalties.
We jumped for joy, with the whole team running over to congratulate Bella.
‘Nice one Sammy,’ she shouted down the field, making me blush.
Their goalie picked up the ball in disgust, frothing and foaming at the mouth as if he wanted to throw it at Ruff, but that canny dog was long gone, a faint ‘woof,’ echoing in the distance.
The final whistle blew and we came together in a circle to celebrate, cheering our real team name in hushed voices out of range of Mr C and everyone else.