T.J. and the Penalty

by Theo Walcott

  So TJ ran around the edge of the square, and Jamie sprayed passes to him. Jamie’s passes weren’t all that accurate, so TJ had plenty of running to do before Mr Wood blew his whistle again.

  ‘Right, everyone,’ he said, as a tall figure in a woolly hat walked across the playground towards them. ‘I expect you think I’m trying to torture you!’ There was a chorus of groans. Even TJ could feel the tiredness in his muscles. ‘I’m making you work hard for a very good reason,’ Mr Wood continued. ‘When we play in this tournament we’ll have to play at least three matches. Then if we win our group, we’ll have to play another three to win the tournament. And we may find ourselves playing extra time too. So you’re going to have to be extremely fit – all of you. Because we want to win, don’t we?’ There was a ragged cheer.

  ‘OK, then. Now we’re going to play a little game. Two v two in a square. You can have two touches, one to control the ball and one to pass. Each pair has to try and keep the ball. Both teams start with ten points. If the ball runs out of the square then the team that touched it last loses a point. TJ, you can play with Marshall against me and Rodrigo.’

  TJ felt a jolt of excitement. He hadn’t noticed Marshall arriving. Marshall Jones played for Wanderers in the Premier League. He was an old friend of Mr Wood, and without Marshall’s help TJ was pretty sure that they wouldn’t be playing any football at Parkview School.

  But this was the first time Marshall had ever joined in a training session, and TJ couldn’t believe that he was actually going to play with him. He glanced across to see how Jamie was getting on, and saw Mr Wood talking to him.

  ‘I’ve got an important job for you, Jamie,’ Mr Wood was saying. ‘Leila, Diane and Ebony have never played before, and they need some help from an expert, so I’d like you to work with them. Is that OK?’

  Jamie tried to look pleased. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I’ll do my best.’

  TJ caught Rafi’s eye. They both knew Mr Wood was being kind to Jamie. He could have just told him he wasn’t fit enough to carry on.

  Marshall shook hands with TJ. ‘Let’s show these guys how it’s done,’ he said, as they waited for Mr Wood to sort out the other groups. ‘Looks like your friend Jamie’s put on a few pounds, yeah? You need to get him fit.’

  ‘I know,’ said TJ. ‘But it’s not that easy.’

  CHAPTER 4

  THEY BEGAN TO play. TJ suddenly remembered that he’d seen this game before when Marshall had taken them to see Wanderers play City. The Wanderers team had used the game as a warm-up, and now he was playing it with an actual Wanderers player. ‘Hey, come on, TJ, wake up,’ Marshall said, as the ball ran past his foot. ‘That’s a point we’ve lost.’

  Rodrigo retrieved the ball and passed to Mr Wood. Pass . . . pass . . . pass . . . It was impossible to get the ball off them. Then suddenly TJ saw Mr Wood’s eyes flick to the left and he stretched out a foot to intercept the pass. He heard Marshall’s shout, back-heeled the ball and darted off to find more space. The ball came back to him hard and fast. There was no time to think. His instincts took over. All the hours and days of practising against the wall in his back garden now paid off. He took the pace off the ball with the inside of his foot, and at the same time he was moving away from Mr Wood, making himself half a metre of space to play the ball back to Marshall.

  Faster and faster, TJ and Marshall moved the ball around the square. Finally Mr Wood stopped. He was out of breath, and he winced slightly as he put weight on one of his legs.

  ‘Hey, man, are you OK?’ said Marshall. ‘I didn’t know it was going to turn into a full-scale workout. TJ, that was incredible!’

  TJ couldn’t say a thing. Now that they had stopped, his legs felt like jelly.

  Mr Wood blew his whistle and gathered everyone together. ‘Well done, everyone. Now, Marshall didn’t just come here to give me a hard time on the football pitch,’ he said. ‘We’ve arranged for all of Year Six to go on an official school trip to the Wanderers training ground this Friday as part of our football project.’

  He waited until the excited chatter died down, and then he continued. ‘We’ll watch Wanderers train and then we’re all going to do a fitness test.’

  ‘Awesome,’ breathed Rob. ‘We’ll have so many stats. Will they test everyone’s heart rate too?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ laughed Mr Wood. ‘I’m sure we can see all the equipment they use though, right, Marshall? We’ll learn a lot about Sports Science for our project. We’ll find out how footballers keep fit and healthy – what kind of exercise they do and what they eat. The inspectors will love it.’

  As they walked home, Jamie was lost in gloomy thoughts. ‘Come on, Jamie,’ said Tulsi. ‘We’re going to see Wanderers. So we’ll get to meet them all, which will be amazing.’

  ‘And have our fitness tested. I’m going to look stupid. I don’t want to come.’

  But when Friday arrived Jamie was looking more cheerful. ‘I’ve been dieting,’ he said in the playground before school. ‘I reckon it’s made a difference.’

  ‘Great!’ TJ replied. ‘What have you done?’

  ‘Well, this morning I had a really small breakfast,’ Jamie said proudly. ‘I just had one bowl of cereal and a couple of slices of toast . . .’

  ‘Excellent!’ exclaimed Tulsi.

  ‘And then Mum made me bacon and eggs,’ Jamie continued. ‘But I only had one egg, and I didn’t have a sausage . . .’

  ‘Oh,’ Tulsi said.

  ‘And then a couple of bananas, because they’re fruit, aren’t they? And you have to eat fruit.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ said Rob. ‘I estimate you had about fifteen hundred calories for breakfast. Are you planning to eat many more meals today?’

  ‘Just my packed lunch,’ Jamie said. ‘And my tea when I get home. And maybe a little snack before I go to bed.’

  ‘But what will you have for tea?’ Rob asked him.

  ‘Pie and chips, probably,’ Jamie said. ‘And my mum makes really nice afters. Sponge pudding and custard maybe. Mmmmm.’ He licked his lips.

  Rob frowned. ‘Well, if all your meals are as big as that,’ he said, ‘you’ll probably have to run about fifteen kilometres just to get rid of your extra calories.’

  Jamie stared at him. ‘Are you sure?’ he said. ‘That can’t be right.’

  ‘You’re just going to have to eat less, Jamie,’ laughed Tulsi. ‘Or eat different things.’

  ‘Or play lots of football,’ said Jamie with a grin. ‘Come on, we can play for ten minutes before school.’

  The journey to the Wanderers training ground was short. The coach pulled up in front of a brick building with WANDERERS FC in big letters across the front. They all climbed out and a young man in a tracksuit greeted them.

  ‘I’m Phil,’ he said. ‘I’m a coach with the Academy here at Wanderers. Do you all know about the Academy?’ Most of the class shook their heads. ‘It’s where we coach the very best young players,’ Phil told them. ‘You can start when you’re eight years old.’

  ‘But how do you join?’ asked Rafi.

  ‘We find you,’ said Phil with a smile. ‘We have scouts everywhere watching matches. School matches, Sunday League matches. We’re always looking for talent. If we see someone we like we usually invite them to our Player Development Centre so we can help them to improve. And then, maybe, we ask them to join the Academy. Anyway, Marshall asked me to show you around today. I guess you’d like to watch the first team training, yeah?’

  Phil led them along a pathway and through a car park full of shiny black four-wheel drives and sports cars. ‘There’s Marshall’s Ferrari,’ said Rob.

  Phil laughed. ‘He loves that car,’ he said. ‘Look! Here we are.’

  They turned a corner by a huge white building and saw green football pitches stretching into the distance. Close by, footballers were dribbling balls backwards and forwards between rows of cones at incredible speed. ‘It’s the same as what Mr Wood makes us do,’ said TJ, surprised.

  ‘I
t’s still football, isn’t it?’ said Phil. ‘We all play the same game, so we all have to practise the same things, no matter how good we are.’

  They watched the Wanderers players go through a whole series of drills, and then the players split into two groups. ‘The strikers and midfield players are going to practise shooting,’ Phil told them. ‘And the defenders are practising heading.’

  They watched as the defenders took turns to kick high balls to each other. ‘That must really hurt,’ said Jamie, as one of them headed a ball that came down from an enormous height.

  ‘That’s their job,’ Phil told him. ‘A defender has to head it clear. If he waits for it to drop in front of him, an attacker will have a much better chance of winning the ball.’

  ‘I’d rather do that,’ said Tulsi, pointing to the other end of the pitch. The players were working in teams of three, passing the ball between them like lightning until one player ended with a shot on goal.

  ‘Well,’ Phil said, ‘they’ll be taking a break in a moment. How about you try it for yourselves?’

  CHAPTER 5

  MARSHALL CAME OVER to talk to them, as the players left the pitch. ‘They’re going to have a go at that drill,’ Phil told him.

  ‘Well, you watch out for TJ here. He’s got a shot that can knock over a head teacher from twenty-five metres! Good luck, all of you. I’ll see you in a while.’

  ‘Is that true?’ Phil asked TJ.

  ‘It was an accident,’ TJ said with a grin.

  ‘Well, you be careful. I don’t want to get hurt.’

  The drill was more complicated than anything they’d done at school. Mr Wood helped Phil to get them organized. TJ was working with Rodrigo and Tommy. He hit the ball to Tommy on the wing. Tommy pretended to run away from him, but then turned back and hit the ball first time with the outside of his foot. It curved in towards Rodrigo, who was standing on the edge of the penalty area. Rodrigo’s job was simply to lay the ball back to Tommy, who followed after his own pass and shot at the goal.

  ‘Great stuff,’ said Phil. ‘Did you understand that, everyone? Now, this time you change places. TJ goes on the wing, Tommy lays it back, and Rodrigo joins the queue. Easy, isn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t get it,’ wailed Leila. ‘I can’t even kick it that far.’

  ‘I bet you can,’ said Jamie. He’d taken his job of helping the girls very seriously. ‘Just do what I showed you the other day. You’ll be fine.’

  TJ smiled. That was why Jamie was such an important part of the team. He was always helping people. Very soon they were all working smoothly, taking turns and then running back to join the line, and even Rob had put down his notebook for once and was joining in. ‘Well done, everyone,’ said Phil. ‘Let’s make it more interesting now. You’ve been shooting into an empty net, but now I’m going to go in goal. We’ll see if you can beat me.’

  As TJ moved slowly forward in the line, Phil saved shot after shot. ‘Come on,’ he said, laughing. ‘You can do better than that. Where’s the lad who knocked the head teacher over?’

  TJ was at the front now. He played the ball to Tommy, who curled a great pass to Rodrigo. TJ was certain Tommy was going to score, as Rodrigo set the ball up for him nicely, but Tommy’s left-foot shot crashed against the foot of the post. ‘Great try!’ said Phil. ‘That’s twelve nil to me.’

  Jamie was right behind TJ in the line. ‘Go on, TJ,’ he said. ‘Blast it! He’s just laughing at us.’

  TJ ran out to the wing and Jamie hit the ball to him. TJ flicked the ball to Tommy and raced after the pass. Tommy stunned the ball neatly into his path and TJ put everything he had into a low drive towards the far post. It hit the back of the net before Phil could even move. He stood there staring at TJ, as he exchanged high-fives with Tommy.

  ‘What did I tell you?’ Marshall said. He’d been watching from the side with Mr Wood and the Wanderers first-team coach. ‘You’re lucky you didn’t get in the way of that one, Phil. Nice one, TJ! I couldn’t have hit that better myself.’

  ‘You’re doing a great job with these kids, Johnny,’ the first-team coach said to Mr Wood, with a quick glance at TJ. ‘It looks like you’ve got some real talent there. But we have to get on now. I’ll see you later.’

  For nearly an hour the kids from Parkview watched the Wanderers team training.

  ‘Dexter Gordon smiled at me,’ said Tulsi, with a dreamy expression on her face.

  ‘Yes, well, now you’ve all had a good rest,’ Mr Wood said, ‘we’re going to do something called a beep test.’

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Jamie.

  ‘It’ll tell us exactly how fit you all are,’ replied Mr Wood. ‘And then we can plan how to get fitter. It’s easy. All you have to do is run between those sets of cones. You time your runs to match the beeps, and after a while the beeps will start getting faster. When you can’t keep up, then you stop and we give you your score. Off you go!’

  TJ soon found himself running comfortably in time to the beeps, and so did a lot of the others. But as the beeps began to speed up, people started drop out. Jamie was dragging his feet. He was falling behind. ‘You can do it, Jamie,’ said TJ. ‘Keep going. Breathe!’

  But it was no use. Two more beeps and TJ heard Mr Wood saying, ‘You’re out, Jamie. Come and sit down.’

  TJ turned with the beep and saw Jamie bent double, gasping for breath. Next time he turned, the beeps had speeded up again and he was starting to breathe a little faster himself. More and more kids dropped out, until only TJ and Tulsi were left running. TJ glanced across at Tulsi. She hardly seemed to be making any effort. TJ’s legs were beginning to feel like lumps of wood. At the next turn he was late, and Mr Wood yelled, ‘Come on, TJ, you have to catch up.’

  He pushed his legs as fast as they would go, and at the next turn he was exactly in time with the beep, but now he saw that Tulsi was running away from him. He kept telling his legs to move, but they wouldn’t. It was like running through treacle.

  ‘That’s enough, TJ,’ Mr Wood told him. TJ collapsed on the ground, as Tulsi carried on, running, turning, faster and faster. And at each turn, everyone cheered.

  Finally Tulsi was forced to stop. ‘Great work, Tulsi,’ Mr Wood said, as they all walked back to the bus.

  ‘How did you do that?’ TJ said. ‘I thought I was faster than you.’

  ‘You are faster,’ Tulsi said with a grin. ‘But you can’t keep going as long. Statistics don’t lie, do they, Rob?’

  ‘You are officially the fittest in Year Six,’ Rob said.

  ‘And we all know who’s unfit,’ said Danny spitefully.

  Jamie just walked on ahead of them. TJ hoped he hadn’t heard. He knew that Jamie really was doing his best. He just needed a little help, that was all.

  CHAPTER 6

  ‘WE HAVE TO do something, Tulsi said after school. They were standing in the playground – Tommy, Rodrigo, Rafi, Tulsi, Rob and TJ. Jamie had walked off without saying a word.

  ‘It’s not just that he eats too much,’ Rafi said. ‘It’s what he eats. All those potatoes and chips and pies.’

  ‘And puddings,’ said Tulsi. ‘Don’t forget the puddings. I’ve been round to Jamie’s house. They always have afters. Steamed puddings with custard and banoffee pie and—’

  ‘Don’t,’ interrupted TJ. ‘You’re making me hungry.’

  ‘Just imagine what it must be like for Jamie,’ Tulsi said. ‘And then when he gets to school there’s Mrs Hubbard piling his plate up so high he can hardly carry it.’

  ‘So, come on then,’ said Tommy. ‘You’re so clever. You think of something.’

  ‘Yeah, what do you eat that makes you so fit?’ asked TJ.

  ‘We eat vegetables mostly. And rice and beans. And fruit. My mum’s a really good cook. We don’t ever have chips.’

  ‘Fish,’ said Rodrigo. ‘I eat fish.’

  ‘Hey, Rodrigo!’ TJ said. ‘Brilliant English.’

  Rodrigo smiled. ‘Fish good,’ he said, and he licked his lips then sma
cked them together, making them all laugh.

  ‘You know what?’ Tulsi said. ‘We all eat different kinds of food. Maybe if we gave Jamie some recipes . . .’

  ‘It’s Jamie’s mum who needs the recipes,’ said TJ.

  ‘Yeah, and Mrs Hubbard,’ agreed Rafi. ‘Just imagine if she cooked nice curries, and rice . . .’

  ‘And chapattis,’ said Tulsi.

  ‘Fish!’ said Rodrigo triumphantly.

  ‘And pasta with tomato sauce,’ said Tommy. ’My dad taught me to cook it so Mrs Hubbard could do it easily.’

  ‘It’ll never happen,’ Tulsi said, shaking her head. ‘Mrs Hubbard has been cooking the same things as long as I can remember, and I bet Jamie’s mum has too. Unless . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Maybe we could have a day at school. A food day. No, a world food day. I bet my mum and dad would make something for it.’

  ‘Like they did when we fixed the pitch,’ said Rafi. ‘It was brilliant.’

  ‘My dad could make lamb and peas,’ TJ said, then his face fell. ‘But Jamie ate double helpings of that. He stuffed himself. It’s not going to work. He’ll just eat more.’

  ‘No,’ said Tulsi. ‘It’ll work. He didn’t do himself anything like as much damage filling himself with lamb and peas as he does with sticky toffee pudding. We’ll show everyone there’s loads of nice things you can eat that don’t make you fat.’

  ‘We could have football too,’ said Rob, who had been thinking hard. ‘A mini World Cup, food, football, fitness and fun. How about that?’

  ‘Genius,’ said TJ. ‘I mean, it can be part of our football project, can’t it? The World Cup will be Geography and we’ll be doing Food Technology too.’

  ‘And there’s lots of science,’ added Rob. ‘I bet Mr Wood will love it. Let’s go and ask him.’

  *

  Rob was right. Mr Wood did love the idea, and so did their head teacher, Mr Burrows. ‘Just the thing!’ he said when Mr Wood took them to see him. ‘You go ahead and organize it, Mr Wood.’