by A M Layet
When Big Al managed to stop laughing, he had a few last words for his team.
‘Go get ‘em,’ he told his chosen seven, ‘and don’t leave any survivors.’
To his dismay, Hat Trick Boy was not one of the chosen seven. He was left standing on the sidelines, where he was no help to anyone, while Jon Jamerson was sent onto the pitch. Jon Jamerson advanced towards the Hot Shots players with hunched shoulders and a mean look on his face.
Hot Shots started with the ball. Uno passed it to Sid who tried to dribble towards the Hammers' goal, but was met by a stampede of Hammers players who flattened him. Jon Jamerson emerged from the mess with the ball. He started running towards the Hot Shots' goal. Uno ran after him and just managed to tap Jon Jamerson on the shoulder before he could shoot.
‘The goal’s that way,’ he told him and pointed straight ahead at Cowpat curled up on the ground asleep. Jon Jamerson was just about to say something very rude in reply when Uno tapped the ball away from his feet and kicked it up field towards Sid. Sid managed to run all the way into the elbow of one of the Hammers’ defenders.
Very soon, Jon Jamerson was in possession of the ball again and was advancing towards the penalty box. This time it was Sid who got to him first and tapped him on the shoulder.
‘Don’t shoot now,’ Sid warned him, ‘You’ve only got a 40% chance of scoring. Wait until you get inside the penalty box. Your chance goes up to 80%.’
Jon Jamerson was just about to tell Sid to shut up when Sid stuck out his foot and nudged the ball towards Uno who had come over to help.
In the first half, there was only one shot on goal. It came from the boot of Jon Jamerson. He tackled Uno deep in defence, won the ball, and immediately shot for goal before anyone could start giving him helpful advice. Cowpat was still lying on the ground, sunbathing, as the ball curled through the air. Hat Trick Boy could see it hurtling towards the top right hand corner.
He shut his eyes. He couldn’t bear to watch. He couldn’t bear to see the look of triumph on Jon Jamerson’s face. Then there was a small cheer. Hat Trick Boy peeped open an eye. Cowpat was suspended from his own crossbar like a monkey, his left arm curled round the goalpost, the ball nestled in his right arm. He dropped to the ground, booted the ball deep into the opposition half, and then lay back down on his blanket. Cowpat, you beauty, thought Hat Trick Boy.
Big Al was not pleased at half time.
‘You should be up 5-0 against this bunch of clowns,’ he roared. ‘What are you doing out there? You’re supposed to be tackling them, which means knocking them over, not letting them tackle you!’
‘They keep fouling me,’ Jon Jamerson complained. ‘Every time I get the ball, they open their mouths and say something stupid.’
Big Al nodded. He could see that they were doing something to upset Jon Jamerson, and he didn’t like it. Hot Shots FC had taken him by surprise. He had thought they were going to be a push over, but the truth was they fought dirty.
‘I’m gonna make some changes,’ he told his lads, and nodded to one of the players on the sidelines. It was Hat Trick Boy.
Chapter Nine - Hat Trick Boy Goes Undercover
Hat Trick Boy knew exactly what he had to do. He had to go undercover. He wore a Hammers kit, but his heart belonged to Hot Shots and he had to help them win. But he had to do it carefully. If he was too obvious, Big Al would have him off the pitch and out of the team.
Hot Shots came back after half time with a bang, thanks to Cowpat. He had found some crash cymbals in Sid’s emergency back pack and gave them loud clang just as Big Al blew the whistle. This was so much fun that Cowpat decided to keep doing it whenever Hammers got the ball and looked dangerous. Every time Cowpat clanged the cymbals, the Hammers player would look up, and Sid, Uno or whoever was nearest would dive in with a well timed tackle. It was a brilliant tactic right up to the moment Big Al stormed down the pitch, grabbed the cymbals from Cowpat’s hands, crashed them on his head, and stormed off with them.
From this moment onwards, Cowpat couldn’t hear anything. This meant he had to sit up and pay attention, and couldn’t sunbathe any more. He quickly became bored standing in goal, waiting for the ball to come to him. He started cheering when the Hammers got the ball. When Jon Jamerson reached the penalty box, Cowpat screamed,
‘Here, pass it to me.’
And Jon Jamerson did. He kicked it right at Cowpat’s feet. Cowpat gave Jon Jamerson a big thumbs up and started running up the field, the ball at his feet, making noises with his bottom that sounded like the clang of crash cymbals.
No one on the Hammers team knew what to do with this boy who sounded like he had a brass band inside his bottom and who was running up the pitch like a rapidly deflating balloon, backwards and forwards and side to side. So no one did anything. Cowpat ran all the way to the other end of the pitch and scored the first goal of the match.
This would be the right moment to say Cowpat went bananas. But he didn’t go bananas, because he already was bananas, so instead he calmly sauntered back to his own goal and ate a banana. Then he burped. Then he farted. And then, goal celebration over, he bowed.
This changed the match for good. It made Big Al really, really angry which made the Hammers really, really mean. They pushed their way into the Hot Shots own half and stayed there, shooting again and again at goal. Sid, Uno, and the three other Hot Shots players formed a wall in front of their own goal and stayed there. Hat Trick Boy gave up pretending he was a Hammers player and joined the wall.
When Big Al saw Hat Trick Boy in the Hot Shots wall, he got even angrier. He shouted at Hat Trick Boy to come off the pitch. Hat Trick Boy gave up pretending to listen to Big Al, and booted away ball after ball that came near the Hot Shots’ goal. Behind his line of players, Cowpat began to get bored again. He wondered about running up to the half way line to see if someone might pass to him.
He decided against it. Good thing too. Because the next moment, a rocket shot from Jon Jamerson actually made a hole in the wall the size of Uno, who fell to the ground groaning. The ball zoomed towards the back of the net. Cowpat had to do something very fast to stop the Hammers from equalising. He took two giant leaps, dived towards the ball, and caught it just before it passed the goal line.
Moments later the whistle blew and the match was over. The Hammers had failed to score. Hat Trick Boy jumped on top of Cowpat and screamed,
‘We won!’
He was joined by Sid, Uno, and the other three members of Hot Shots. Hat Trick Boy didn’t know their names, but he felt like he had known them all his life. He felt closer to them than to his own brothers. He didn’t have any brothers, but that’s not the point.
There were a few very noisy minutes of jumping up and down, screaming, yelling, clapping each other on the back, punching each other in the arm, burping (you can guess who was doing this) and farting (and this!).
The happy Hot Shots party was broken up by the sound of Big Al cracking his knuckles. Big Al and the whole of the Hammers squad were standing right behind the very small group of Hot Shots players; and they hadn’t come over to shake hands.
Chapter Ten - Hat Trick Boy v Big Al
Big Al’s expression was a cross between looking like he wanted to murder Hat Trick Boy and looking like he wanted to murder the whole Hot Shots team.
‘We won?’ Big Al said to Hat Trick Boy. ‘You just said we won. What do you mean we? You’re supposed to be one of the Hammers, and we didn’t win.’
Hat Trick Boy should have felt worried. He should have realised Big Al hadn’t come over to say well played. But Hat Trick Boy wasn’t thinking straight. He was too busy being happy. Hot Shots had just beaten the Hammers. Hat Trick Boy felt invincible.
He pulled off his Hammers shirt. Underneath he was wearing a white vest. On it was the picture he had drawn first thing that morning using Tilly’s pens. It was a picture of a football and the written underneath in red: Hot Shots FC.
There was a menacing growl in Big Al’s throat. But Hat
Trick Boy was still feeling invincible.
‘And I’ve got something for you,’ he told Big Al.
He fished around inside his shorts and pulled out a crumpled and slightly smelly piece of folded up paper. It was the letter he had written to Big Al that morning. Hat Trick Boy offered it to Big Al. The manager looked at the paper as he might a rat that had crawled out from a drain. He made no move to take it.
‘I’ll read it to you then, shall I?’ Hat Trick Boy offered.
Hat Trick Boy was vaguely aware of movement behind him. Sid, who was good in an emergency, was tugging at his sleeve and muttering something that sounded like,
‘We’ve got to get out of here. Now!’
But Hat Trick Boy ignored Sid. He was still, mistakenly, feeling invincible. He unwrapped the piece of paper, cleared his throat, and read:
Hat Trick Boy looked up from his piece of paper. Big Al’s fist was inches away from his face. The rest of the Hammers squad was also closing in. There was only one thing left to do, and that was leg it. Hat Trick Boy ran all the way out of the Hammers ground, through the deserted car park, along the streets after the other Hot Shots players, and all the way back to Sid’s emergency bomb shelter at the bottom of Sid’s garden.
They locked themselves in the bomb shelter and didn’t come out until they had eaten all the sweets Sid had been stockpiling as emergency rations in case the world blew up. Sid was less than happy about this.
‘But I need those,’ he complained, as Cowpat ripped open another packet of fizzy sweets and poured the entire contents into his mouth.
‘You don’t really,’ Uno told him, ‘cause if the world blows up, you won’t need anything. You’ll be blown up too. And so will these sweets, which would be a waste.’
‘No I won’t, and no they won’t,’ Sid replied, ‘because I have made this shelter bomb-proof by lining it with cotton wool.’
But this did not stop Cowpat eating all the sweets he could find. Cowpat still couldn’t hear properly because of the cymbal crash on his head and when he saw Sid pointing at the walls, he thought he could eat them too. So he started pulling out handfuls of cotton wool and trying to eat it, thinking it must be a kind of candy floss. He had damaged the lining beyond repair before he realised it didn’t taste nice.
Fed up, Sid unlocked the bomb shelter and threw them all out. The party was over.
Epilogue
The rest, as they say, is history. This means that Hot Shots went on to become a famous and successful under 9’s football team. Hat Trick Boy scored lots more hat tricks. Sid never needed his emergency bomb shelter, but he did repair it and bought a lot more sweets for it, just in case. Uno won the Nobel Prize for map making. And Cowpat opened a sweet shop, which is what he always wanted to do. Then he ate all the sweets, which is also what he always wanted to do. Then he had nothing left to sell but the shop, so he sold that. Then he had nothing, but he was happy.
Big Al continued to coach Hammers FC. He also continued to get bigger and bigger, maybe something to do with the burger van that was permanently parked in the deserted car park outside Hammers FC club house. And Jon Jamerson continued to be Jon Jamerson. Well done him.
But the road to becoming a famous and successful football team is long and hard; Hot Shots FC have only just started. There are plenty more matches to play.
Here’s what we can look forward to in the next book, Hot Shots FC v Dynamite FC:
*A fixture list
*Finding out the names of the other three boys in the Hot Shots team
*Hot Shots playing their first official league match
*Something horrible happening to Tilly’s barbies that are still suspended from Hat Trick Boy’s goal posts
*Hat Trick Boy doing you know what (scoring a hat trick)
*Cowpat doing you know what (a fart)
*Loads more footie action, such as free kicks, goal kicks, and overhead kicks
Don't forget to find out more about Hot Shots FC at www.amlayet.co.uk