by Dan Freedman
“I promise I haven’t,” said Jamie, smiling. He hadn’t been able to stop grinning since he’d kicked that football. “The only exercise I’ve been doing is all the stuff Archie has made me…”
It was only as he said the words that Jamie fully appreciated what had been happening over the last few months. All that lifting, carrying and painting… It had all been part of Archie’s plan. Slowly but surely, he’d been nurturing Jamie’s recovery. Restoring him back to full fitness.
“Well, I can only tell you that your core stability is as good as, if not better than, eighty per cent of the players in our First Team squad,” stated Dr Ramsey.
Jamie and Harry Armstrong sat, listening intently to the doc’s analysis. The minute training had finished, Harry had asked Jamie to come to the medical centre to get a full diagnosis.
But now Dr Ramsey had stopped talking.
“And?” asked Armstrong. “Does that mean he’s OK to play?”
“I’m afraid it’s not quite as simple as that, Harry.”
“What do you mean ‘it’s not that simple’? Either he’s fit to play or he’s not.”
“Let me try and explain,” said Dr Ramsey. “Physically, medically even, Jamie is a hundred per cent fit. But where traumas like this have occurred you never truly know the strength of the joint or bone until they are tested … taken to the limit, if you like.
“It may be that Jamie is completely fine, good as new. But it may also be that there is a weakness there and, if he were to sustain a trauma to either his back or leg again, this time, the injuries could be … well, I’m afraid there’s no other way to say it … irreversible.”
Dr Ramsey seemed to linger for an impossibly long time over the word irreversible. Then he looked up and concluded: “Basically, we’ll only know when his body is put to the ultimate test.”
“By which time it could be too late?” asked Harry Armstrong.
But it wasn’t really a question.
As Dr Ramsey left the room, Harry Armstrong looked at Jamie.
“I’m going to be completely honest with you, Jamie,” he said. “As a football manager, I’m desperate to have you in my team. I watched you in that Youth Cup Final and I’ve never seen anything like it. In football terms, it’s a no-brainer. You go straight into my First Team squad. That’s how good I believe you are. And … God knows we need you...
“But this is not a simple decision, Jamie. We both heard what the doc said – there are serious risks in you playing football again. The question is: are you prepared to take those risks?”
“Please tell me you’re joking,” said Jeremy, striding around the room like a madman. Jamie had told his mum and Jeremy everything that had happened and that Hawkstone were prepared to put him on a temporary playing contract. He and Jeremy had been arguing for the last half an hour.
“Am I the only one who can see what’s happening here?” Jeremy continued. “So he starts playing again and then he gets rejected – or worse still, injured – and what’s he left with then? Nothing. Zilch. Again… No qualifications, no future, nothing. I say he starts back at school in September and—”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Jeremy – it’s his dream!” Jamie’s mum suddenly declared. “Sometimes you have to take a risk to get what you want.”
Then she went into the kitchen. Discussion over.
Jamie’s mouth hung wide open. So did Jeremy’s. Neither of them had ever seen her be so decisive.
For a while, Jamie couldn’t work it out. His mum never seemed to take his side any more and now she’d just supported him in the biggest gamble of his life. And then a memory from when he was really young elbowed its way into Jamie’s mind, and it explained a lot.
One day, when he’d just started going to school, Jamie had come home one afternoon and asked his mum what the word motto meant.
“It’s a saying,” she’d explained. “An idea that you try to live your life by. Like: you don’t regret what you do do, only what you don’t. That’s my motto,” she’d smiled. “I think it’s a good one.”
The next day, Jamie was in the office of the Hawkstone Club Secretary, Eugene Elliott. In front of him was a short-term playing contract.
“Where do I sign, Mr Elliott?” asked Jamie.
“Don’t you want to negotiate first?” Eugene Elliott laughed. “Have you got an agent?”
“I don’t have an agent any more,” Jamie responded. He’d been down that path once before already. “It’s not about the money for me.”
“Wow,” said Eugene Elliott, handing Jamie a pen. “You really are a different breed!”
“I just want to play football,” Jamie said. “For Hawkstone.”
Then he signed the contract.
Jamie laced up his boots and walked out on to the Hawkstone United training pitch.
As a player.
Archie was there, sitting on his mower on the adjacent pitch. He’d said he wasn’t going to replace Jamie just yet; in case it didn’t work out, Jamie’s old job would still be there for him. He gave Jamie a big thumbs up. Jamie returned the gesture.
Jamie hoped that neither Archie nor anyone else would find any specks of sick in the changing room; he’d tried to wipe it all up but there wasn’t much time – he didn’t want to be late for his first training session. Jamie had spewed up almost his entire breakfast. He was so nervous, he felt he might just suddenly fall over at any given moment.
It had been almost a year since the Youth Cup Final. That was a lifetime ago.
Almost as soon as they started playing, the ball came to Jamie. But he was so worried about what he was going to do with it when he got it that he didn’t control it properly. The ball bounced off his knee and went straight out of play.
The second time that Jamie tried to kick the ball, it went off the wrong side of his boot, gifting possession to the other side. Then, a few minutes later, when Jamie tried to volley in a shot from a glorious Glenn Richardson cross, he thrashed at the ball so wildly that he missed it completely and ended up in a heap on the ground.
Jamie punched the turf and yelled so loudly in frustration that Harry Armstrong actually stopped the game.
The other Hawkstone players were all just staring at him. They weren’t even laughing. They felt embarrassed for him.
“This some sort of prank, then, is it, gaffer?” asked Glenn Richardson. “One of them TV wind-up programmes where we’re supposed to believe that you’ve signed the lad from maintenance and then someone tells us it’s all been a gag?”
“Good question,” said Harry Armstrong, smiling at Jamie as he answered. “Could be. You’ll have to wait until the end of training to find out, won’t you?”
Jamie got to his feet. He looked down at his left leg. One of the scars went all the way up from his shin to his knee. You could still see where the stitches had been inserted.
What did he think he was doing? Did he honestly believe that he could still play football at this level? After everything his body had been through? What had happened in that other training session had been the final bit of football that his body had been willing to offer. Not the start of a new chapter.
“Keep your head still,” Harry Armstrong said quietly to Jamie as he picked up the ball. “Everything in sport comes from keeping your head still.”
Then Harry suddenly roared: “Play ON!” and he smacked the ball straight at Jamie...
There was no time for Jamie to think. He instinctively controlled the ball on his thigh. It bounced upwards. He let it rest on his forehead for a second, tilting his neck to keep the ball still. Then he flicked the ball up, off his head and into the air. As it dropped, Jamie smashed an inch-perfect fifty-yard cross-field pass to the right-winger way out on the other side of the pitch.
It was one of the best long passes that Jamie had ever played.
“What were y
ou saying again, Glenn?” Harry Armstrong asked his star midfielder as they both followed Jamie’s ball out to the wing.
“Nothing,” said Glenn Richardson. “Fair enough, gaffer; the boy can play.”
“Oh, he can play all right.”
Dillon Simmonds was staring at Archie the kit-man but he wasn’t listening to a word he was saying.
All he could think about was Jammy Jamie Johnson.
He couldn’t believe that Johnson had suddenly gone from being Archie’s little assistant to training with the Hawkstone First Team squad.
Why was it that everyone always thought Johnson was the special one? Winger was an easy position to play, anyway; they didn’t have to do any work.
Dillon thought back to when he was at Kingfield School. Before Johnson had joined, Dillon had always been known as the best player, but then this skinny ginger kid arrived from nowhere and suddenly no one was interested in Dillon Simmonds any more. All they wanted to talk about was this winger with the pace and the skill.
Dillon thought things had finally changed when he’d been the first boy in their year to be signed up by a professional club. But then who turned up at Hawkstone out of the blue and suddenly got to train with the First Team? Who else? Jammy Jamie Johnson. That’s who.
“OK, lads, I just need half an hour of your time,” said Archie Fairclough. “As some of you may know, I’ve just lost my assistant … which means I need a bit of help with the kit. And the manager has been kind enough to say that you lucky lot are the ones that can help me!”
A collective groan spread around the academy boys.
“Do we have to? Why us?” they pleaded.
“Oh, stop moaning,” snapped Archie. “A bit of manual work won’t kill you!”
Then he started chucking different pairs of football boots at the young Hawkstone players.
“The First Team are going to play the biggest match in this club’s history on Sunday,” said Archie. “So they’ll need their boots in shiny, faultless, pristine condition...”
Dillon just about caught the pair of boots that Archie flung at him. He could have sworn that Archie had thrown them harder than he’d needed to.
Dillon dipped his towel into the bucket of warm, soapy water and began picking the mud out from the studs and polishing the leather of the boots. He scrubbed hard at the heel to reveal the initials that had been written there.
The letters slowly appeared like ghosts from Dillon’s nightmare… JJ.
Jamie turned off the TV. All the sports stations had wall-to-wall previews of the Foxborough–Hawkstone game.
They were all speculating about the team news. But none of them knew about Jamie. Harry Armstrong hadn’t told anyone. He wanted to keep it up his sleeve.
“Something to give Brian Robertson a little shock just before kick-off,” he’d told Jamie.
Funny how life goes in circles, Jamie thought to himself as he turned off the light above his bed. Here he was, staying in the same Travelodge that he and his dad had stayed in when they had first come up to Foxborough all those months ago.
He tried to imagine where his dad was now and what he would be doing. Probably trying to rip someone else off. Jamie pictured him – sitting in a pub somewhere tomorrow, watching the game. Then, suddenly, he would see Jamie Johnson come on to the pitch.
Jamie hoped his dad would choke on his beer.
Jamie’s eyelids began to droop as his body wriggled into a snug position.
Now, in the darkness, his mind was leaving this room and travelling somewhere else.
His memory was returning to a place it had been before and to a moment that had changed the course of Jamie’s life…
Jamie was standing on the side of a road. He recognized the road. But he could not yet place it.
He could hear voices behind him: soft at first, now getting louder and more aggressive.
“Yeah, he’s just a little boy!” they were shouting. No, not they; only one voice, one nasty, vicious voice. “Go home, little boy,” the voice was shouting. “Go back to your mummy.”
Back in the hotel, Jamie’s body twitched and his eyelids flickered as, beneath them, that night’s events continued to unfold for him.
From above, Jamie could see himself standing in the road, turning around to cross back towards the other Foxborough players...
“No!” Jamie wanted to scream to himself, to warn himself, but his mouth was locked shut. He couldn’t stop himself doing it…
Jamie wasn’t looking as he started to cross the road, but his head turned when he heard the screech of braking tyres.
The car crashed into Jamie’s body – a body that had been protected and prized as one of football’s most valuable assets – and tossed it on to the bonnet.
Now he could see himself bouncing off the window and over the car; he was about to hit the ground—
And then suddenly Jamie was awake. He was bolt upright with sweat pouring down his forehead. It was a cold sweat, a freezing sweat. Jamie’s whole body was shivering and his eyes were wide open with fright.
He looked across to the alarm clock by his bed. It was four a.m. There were exactly twelve hours to go until kick-off.
The bell rang in the Hawkstone dressing room. It was showtime.
“OK, lads,” shouted Harry Armstrong, clapping his hands together. “I know I don’t have to say much today. It’s quite simple. If we lose, this club goes down, more than a few of us will be looking for new clubs and Hawkstone United could well go out of business.
“Whatever you’ve got in your bodies and in your hearts, I want you to give it all out there today. Everything. I want you to think about all those fans that have come up the motorway to support us. This club means the world to them. Just remember that.
“And, lads, there’s good news too; it’s that there’s no pressure on you at all today. If it doesn’t go our way, I’ll take all the blame. No problem. But, if there’s glory to be had out there, it’s all yours.
“And believe me, if we can pull this off, you lot will be heroes at this club for the rest of your lives! Now let’s go out there and do this!”
“Come on!” roared the Hawkstone players, leaping to their feet.
Jamie jumped up and clenched his fist as tight as he could.
He was sure that his whole career, his whole life even, had been building towards this day.
The Hawkstone players exited their dressing room and lined up in the tunnel. They were all jogging on the spot, nervously chewing gum and tipping their heads from side to side.
Jamie was kicking a ball against the wall when he felt a sharp prod in his rib. He turned around.
“What’s up?” said Bolt, locking Jamie’s palm in his own and pulling it to his chest.
“Bolt! How’s it going? Good to see you, bruv!”
“Whoa!” said Bolt, suddenly taking a surprised step back, looking at Jamie suspiciously. “What’s happened to you?”
“What do you mean?”
“You been on the weights or something?”
Jamie realized what Bolt was talking about: his new physique. It was true, he must have grown about two inches and put on a stone in muscle since their days together in the Foxborough Youth Team.
“Yeah – you could say that,” Jamie smiled, remembering how on his first day with Archie he’d hardly been able to lift a five-a-side goal. Within a couple of months he’d been able to march the whole length of the pitch carrying the goal above his head.
“Hopefully I’ll see you out there today,” said Bolt. “I’m sub. I played for the First Team in the Cup last week.”
“That’s wicked!” said Jamie. “Told you we’d all make it! What about Xabi, where’s he?”
Bolt’s face dropped.
“He’s gone back home,” he said, almost apologizing. “They sold him back
to his local club but kept a buy-back clause.”
“What happened?” asked Jamie.
“He was getting homesick. Turned out he had a girlfriend back home and he was missing her so much it was starting to affect his game.”
The Foxborough players were coming out of their dressing room now.
“OK, man. Good luck and we’ll catch up later,” said Bolt, slapping Jamie on the back as he went.
“Yeah – see you, mate,” said Jamie.
But the smile was wiped off Jamie’s face as soon as the Foxborough team lined up in the tunnel.
Standing next to Jamie, wearing a poisonous expression on his face, was Rick Morgan.
Morgan was glaring at Jamie as though he wanted to destroy him.
Jamie took a deep breath and looked straight ahead. Somehow, he’d completely forgotten that his direct opponent today would be the man whose taunts, almost exactly a year ago, had nearly wrecked Jamie’s entire career.
Today, they would sort this out once and for all.
On the pitch.
“And you join us here in Foxborough for a terrific climax to the Premier League season. What a game we have in store for you today.
“The hosts, Foxborough, need only a point to win the League title for the third year in a row, while Hawkstone United come here knowing that only a win will be good enough to save them from relegation.
“And even the team line-ups are not without a little drama.
“Now, who remembers Jamie Johnson? He was the young winger who put in a starring performance for Foxborough in last season’s Youth Cup Final, only to be cruelly struck down in a shocking car accident only days later.
“That was end of the young prodigy’s career. Or so we thought. Today Jamie Johnson is back … but there has been a change: Johnson is now playing for Hawkstone United!