by Rob Childs
“. . .a long way to go yet . . . concentrate . . . keep it tight at the back. . .”
Katie assured Mrs Gregson that she was fit to carry on, and managed to grab the last segment of orange on the tray before Jake could help himself to a third piece.
“Good luck, Reds,” Mrs Gregson said. “Do your best.”
“C’mon, guys,” cried Nails, as the group broke up. “Let’s get at ’em!”
“Keep it up,” Ollie told Simon, ruffling his hair. “You’re doing great.”
“Yeah, you must’ve been fooling us on the park,” grinned Sadiq. “You can save penalties!”
“Just lucky,” Simon said modestly, and smiled. “But I hope I don’t have to face any more in a shoot-out.”
As Simon trotted towards the opposite goal, he saw that Dad had changed ends too, and was already in position with his camera, right behind the net. Tilly greeted him with a loud bark of recognition.
“Good girl!” Simon called out. “Keep hold of her, Dad, please. We don’t want her running on the pitch again.”
“Don’t worry, son, I’ve got her. What did your teachers have to say?”
“Not much,” he said with a shrug.
“Well, I hope they praised you. That’s the least they should’ve. . .” He stopped and pointed. “Watch out!”
Simon had not even heard the whistle to restart the game. As he whirled round, the ball was skimming towards him like a flat stone over water, but he reacted quickly to the danger and managed to get his hands and body right behind the line of the shot. He hugged the ball to his chest in relief.
“You weren’t even lookin’, were yer?” Nails ranted at him. “They nearly caught yer nappin’.”
“Saved it, didn’t I?” Simon retorted, rolling the ball to Emma for her to sweep it away upfield. “That’s all that matters.”
“My fault, son,” Dad admitted. “I was distracting him. Won’t happen again.”
Nails gave Simon a hard stare.
“Right, just keep your mind on the game,” he warned him, before running off.
“Phew! That was close,” Dad said. “Sorry, son, I’ll move further away.”
“Might be best, Dad.”
Simon was not much more than a distant spectator himself for a while, as the Reds enjoyed their best spell of the match so far. The strong wind helped them to pin the Princes back in their own half, making Connor work hard to hold his defence together, but the goalkeeper still had to make good saves from both Sadiq and Jake.
When Simon was eventually called into action again, he was ready. He set off like a sprinter to kick the ball away before any attacker could reach it and then, just a couple of minutes later, came out to narrow the angle as their right-winger prepared to shoot, forcing the boy to steer his shot wide of the target.
There was no need for Simon to fetch the ball. Tilly was on the loose again, doing her favourite job as ball-girl.
She was fast enough to beat any of the spectators to the ball and dribbled it all the way back to Simon with her nose and front paws.
“Good girl!” he said. “Now sit.”
Tilly sat, tensed, waiting for her young master to kick it away again.
“Stay!”
Amazingly, she stayed, too, allowing Dad to grab hold of the lead and Simon to pass the ball out of the area to Nails, who immediately lofted it over the halfway line to find Jake in the clear.
The Princes had perhaps been caught napping, not expecting the ball to reappear on the pitch so quickly. Like Tilly, Jake made the most of his temporary freedom. He burst through a weak challenge, cut into the penalty area and, as the goalkeeper advanced, slid the ball past him into the net to give the Reds a 2-1 lead.
It was a perfect family goal. The move had been started by Tilly from a deep position, carried on by Simon and then Nails who sent Jake away to score. No one else had even touched the ball.
“Magic!” cried Dad. “All down to the Browns!”
He leapt up and down behind Simon’s goal, shouting and whooping, not caring what anybody might think of his antics. Tilly was making almost as much noise and even Mum was clapping.
The Princes, to their credit, fought back hard, driven on by Connor, who would never give up. Simon did well to hold on to an awkward, swerving shot, with strikers ready to pounce on any loose ball, but soon he was distracted by another sighting of the green woodpecker. The bird flew low across the pitch, perhaps alarmed by the noise, skimming over his goal and disappearing into the trees nearby. Simon watched it all the way, forgetting about the game for a few moments.
It almost cost his team dear. Simon never even saw the ball coming his way, but he certainly heard it smack against the crossbar, shaking the whole goal. Nails cleared the rebound to safety and then whirled round to swear at his brother. Simon simply gave a little apologetic shrug.
“Huh! Hero back to zero,” Nails muttered, as he wandered away.
Fortunately for Simon, Nails had no further need to complain because, two minutes later, the game was won and lost.
Jake and Katie swapped passes along the left flank before the winger saw Ollie moving into space ahead of them. With Sadiq also calling for the ball, she used him as a decoy and slipped it to Ollie instead.
“Go for goal!” she screamed.
As the ball ran into the striker’s path so, too, did Connor, but Ollie was ready for him. He shaped as if to try and go past the defender, committing Connor to the tackle, then, with more skilful footwork than anyone expected, he dragged the ball back with the sole of his boot. Connor was left, embarrassed, on his backside in the mud.
Ollie still had the goalkeeper to beat. A fleeting vision came to mind of his previous miss and this time he kept the ball low, guiding it beyond the boy’s dive into the bottom corner of the net.
“The winner!” cried Sadiq, who was first to reach Ollie as he stood even taller than ever with his arms raised to the heavens, soaking up the applause from around the pitch. “It’s all over now.”
He was right, too. The referee’s final blast on the whistle signalled the Reds’ 3-1 victory, and Connor was big enough to go up to Ollie and shake his hand.
“Take back everything I’ve said, Kenning,” he told him. “Pity you weren’t playin’ for us today instead.”
Ollie grinned. “No hard feelings?”
“Oh, yeah – plenty – but I won’t be bothering you again with any more of them,” he promised. “That’s it.”
Katie sidled up to Ollie and Sadiq as the players waited in front of the changing-rooms for the presentation ceremony to begin.
“Proved you can score with your feet, too, Beanpole,” she grinned. “Said you’d do it next time, didn’t I?”
“Sure did,” Ollie chuckled. “Friends, then?”
“Course – now we’ve won,” she laughed. “And with Saddo too – soz, I mean Sadiq.”
Sadiq nodded and smiled at her. “Well, team-mates, anyway.”
When Nails was handed the trophy, he held it high for all the cameras and to the acclaim of the Reds’ supporters, including Mum. She was so carried away that she joined in the cheering for each player as they went up to receive their individual medals.
Simon nipped away to take a last look at the lake, hoping for another glimpse of the green woodpecker. He sat on the grass with Tilly beside him, and draped the medal’s red ribbon over her collar and around the frilly fur of the dog’s neck.
“You deserve this as much as me, Tilly,” he smiled. “Thanks to you, we got that second goal.”
He knew that Tilly would not understand, but she seemed quite happy trying to lick the medal as it dangled on her white bib. She looked up at him and gave what might have been a little bark of agreement.
Woof!
“I’m glad we won the cup, but think I’d still rather be a zero than a hero!” Simon laughed.
Then he stopped to listen to the repeated sound echoing from up in the trees:
. . .rat-a-tat . . . rat-a-tat
. . . rat-a-tat. . .
Author’s note
Many years ago, long before writing took over from teaching – thank goodness – I used to be a goalkeeper. Not a very good one, I admit, but like the reluctant hero, Simon, in this new story, I was better with my hands than my feet, so I usually played in goal. Lots of my soccer stories, like Black & White, feature goalies as main characters. A keeper can go from hero to zero simply by dropping the ball, then back to hero status again after making a great save. No wonder they often say that all goalies are crazy! I think you have to be if you want to wear the No.1 jersey for your team. Best of luck!
Growing up in Derby, Rob Childs wanted to be an England footballer or cricketer, or failing that, a sports journalist – certainly not a teacher. Of course, he did go on to become a teacher, during which time he gained a great deal of experience coaching school teams in football, athletics, cricket and cross-country. He is now a full-time writer and draws on this experience for his stories. He is best known for his successful The Big Match series, the Soccer Mad, Phantom Football and County Cup series in Yearling and for the popular Great! and Wicked series for Corgi Pups.