by Scott Innes
CONTENTS
Dedication
Prologue
Palangonia FC
Loggerheads
Pizza and Ice Cream
The Irresistible Force
The Spy
Locked Down
General Leigh
Locked Up
The Light Bulb
To the Library
Clues
Goodbye, England’s Rose
None so Arrogant
Some Kind of Bad Dream
Death from Above
Etchings
Into the Wild
Slasabo-tik
The Prophecy
The Marshes
Great Strombago
It Is Not Today
Victorious Defeat
Infinite Malaise
A Way Out
A Good Man
Acbaelion Outpost XXI
The Makazka
An Enemy Unmasked
The Weapon
Rumours
The Battle of Palangonia
Smells Like Team Spirit
The Last Stand
And That Was That
Laika’s Gift
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
A note on the author
Palangonia FC Hall of Fame
Supporters
Copyright
For KB, who made it happen
and
for Laura, always.
PROLOGUE
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
I forget who said that – possibly Bryan Robson. I’d ask him, but last I heard he was rounded up and forced to perform hard labour in the phlebonium mines on Gralka IV. He’ll be disappointed with that.
But either way, it’s true. You go through a great deal in your life and in my seven or so decades I’ve maybe seen more than most. Some things I’ll treasure: my Liverpool days, my time in Germany, taking over at Newcastle. But then there are the things I’d sooner forget: that header at the ’82 World Cup, falling off that bloody bike on Superstars, giving Paul Ince my phone number (seriously, there are only so many times you can tolerate receiving a breathy phone call at three in the morning as Incey says, ‘Gaffer – it’s happened again.’). And, of course, the lowest of the low: 1995–96.
Everyone likes to harp on about how my Newcastle lads threw away the league title that season, chucked a twelve-point lead in the bin and allowed Man United to pip us on the final day. But the thing that I’ve always said – and I absolutely stand by this today – is that if the league season had finished in January rather than May, we’d have won the title. And that’s what makes it such a bitter pill to swallow.
But whichever way you look at it, 1995–96 was a gut-punch. I really thought we were going to do it. We had Pete Beardsley and Les Ferdinand up top and Daz Peacock and Warren Barton at the back – and if you think you can name any other defensive pairing with more luxuriant hair than those two then frankly you’re lying. And yet it wasn’t enough. My one tiny consolation at that time was that I was convinced I’d never be able to feel any worse. I had hit rock bottom and Sir Al Ferguson was riding high. But the more things change the more they stay the same. Now it’s not Sir Al Ferguson that I’m up against.
It’s the bloody L’zuhl.
Adapting to life on a new planet is a lot like taking the reins at a new club – you don’t know your way around, you can’t remember anybody’s name and you worry constantly about being vaporised by an aggressive alien race. Well, maybe not that last one.
Life on Palangonia hasn’t been easy, even a year down the line. When the L’zuhl invaded Earth and laid waste to everything mankind had built over however many thousands of years, I was already gone. Say what you like about politicians, but they had a plan and you have to give credit where it’s due. The Alliance Assembly (the big conference of galactic bigwigs) had been fighting the L’zuhl war for generations while we on Earth were blissfully unaware – until the L’zuhl fleet was pretty much on our doorstep. The Assembly helped us to evacuate as much of Earth’s population as possible to various distant planets with the intention that we could regroup and then join them in the fight against the L’zuhl – we weren’t the first or the last planet to get that kind of treatment. Others sadly fell to the L’zuhl before the Alliance could step in. We were the lucky ones, I guess. Depending on your point of view.
The human Compound here on Palangonia is in many ways like a massive great prison – thick stone walls, machine-gun turrets, a heavy law-enforcement presence. But at the same time it has a library, a cinema and three Costa Coffee shops, so I shouldn’t knock it too much. Over six thousand people are housed within the walls and, aside from their occasional attacks on the Compound gates with their spears and their bows and arrows, as well as their repeated claims that we’ve annexed their sacred land and defiled their heritage, the native Palangonian tribespeople have welcomed us with open arms.
But of course, the best thing about the Compound is also the very reason I’m here. My football club: Palangonia FC – the beating heart of the community. Sure, it’s a small operation at the moment, but listen, you’ve got to start somewhere. And yes, okay, there are some people who believe that funding a football team during a time of galactic war is an appalling frivolity – I won’t name names, that’s not my style, but General Leigh is one of them. The way I look at it is this: if not for the beautiful game – the unparalleled glory of a last-minute winner, the jaw-dropping splendour of an overhead kick, the agonising outstretched arm of the goalie keeping a well-struck penalty at bay – then what the bloody hell are we even fighting for? How can the displaced people of Earth (the ones who drew the short straw and ended up out here at the rotten arse-end of space, anyway) possibly hope to keep that stiff upper lip in place without the prospect of going to the match on a Saturday afternoon and watching my boys take on a side from a neighbouring nebula? That’s why Palangonia FC is here. That’s why Kevin Keegan is here. That’s why it matters.
It’s really all we have left.
PALANGONIA FC
I closed the door to the dressing room, the distant hum of the crowd extinguished with the click of the latch. I stared straight down, puffed out my cheeks and shook my head in dismay.
‘Just not good enough, is it?’ I said to my shoes. ‘Not good enough at all. You’ve bottled that. You’ve disappointed me today, boys.’
There were a few awkward coughs and the clacking of boot studs on the floor. I sized up my players in turn, each of them looking anywhere but in my direction (except for Little Dunc, my left-back, though he’s severely cross-eyed so it’s hard to tell either way). My midfield general, Wiggins, looked terribly out of shape and was blowing out of his arse, to be quite frank. I made a mental note to forbid him from going back for seconds during the next pre-match roast dinner. Gribble, central defender of giraffe-like proportions, was staring sullenly at his boots. My holding midfielder, Aidy Pain, a thorn in my side who stubbornly refused to ever do a damn thing I told him, had let us down badly after I shouted to him to keep the energy up midway through the second half – he had promptly sat down in the centre circle for a rest. It had been a shameful showing – from all of them. They weren’t fit to wear the shirt (Wiggins, quite literally).
‘We should have had the beating of that shower today,’ I huffed. ‘This Piscean side are punching well above their weight in this division and yet you let them walk over you and take away all three points. It’s disgraceful, actually.’
‘Ah, now, Kev, let’s be fair,’ said a voice beside me. ‘The ref gave them the rub of the green.’
I turned to look at my assistant, eyebrows raised in surprise at his interjection. For me, Gerry Francis is one in a mil
lion. No, let me dial that back a bit – one in a hundred, let’s say. A solid pair of hands. The funny thing is, although we got along fine and occasionally saw one another socially, Gerry and I never worked together at all back on Earth in the years before the L’zuhl invasion. He just so happened to be on the same evacuation shuttle as me when Earth went all to buggery and it’s always nice to see a familiar face. It’s actually quite a heart-warming story, if you look past the genocidal context.
‘Don’t forget that handball they got away with at 0–0,’ Gerry went on. ‘The fourth official told me the ref couldn’t give it on account of the Pisceans having flippers rather than hands. That old chestnut.’
There were a few murmurs of assent from the squad.
‘Okay, fine,’ I conceded the point. ‘But what about you, Gilly? You were clean through on goal in that second half and you produced the most timid shot I’ve ever seen in my life. The keeper didn’t even bother to catch it, he just leathered the shot right up the other end of the pitch!’
‘But, gaffer,’ Andy Gill said nervously, ‘I play right-back. That wasn’t a shot, it was a passback to our own keeper in our own box and then he cleared it upfield.’
‘Aye, well,’ I muttered, feeling some of the wind retreating from my sails. Gilly was a top-class player, no question, but the trouble was he knew it. I’d signed him on a tip-off from Glenn Hoddle, who’d seen him play for the team from the human colony on Flaxxu, a desert planet a couple of star systems over. Glenn had spent most of that day telling me about ‘Christian Values’ but when I couldn’t find any player on the Cross-Galaxy Database with that name, Andy Gill proved a decent second choice. And yet, here he was undermining my authority with, to be fair, a well-argued rebuttal.
‘The point is,’ I went on, determined not to let them off the hook, ‘we’re disappointing our fans week after week. There were almost thirty-seven people out there tonight and every one of them is going home disappointed.’ I sighed despondently and ran a hand through my hair. ‘Go on, get ready for your warm-down. I’ve said my bit. Think on.’
Wordlessly, my players began to peel off their kit, the smell of sweat, grass and that sticky translucent substance that coats the scales of the Piscean players leaving a sharp tang in the air. As the boys began to file out to the showers, I caught sight of Rodway, my star striker. He was yawning like it was going out of fashion, and in that moment my patience with him reached an end.
‘Everything okay, gaffer?’ he asked brightly on catching my eye. He had one foot out of the changing room door before I yanked him back in by the elbow.
‘Don’t “everything okay” me, son,’ I replied sternly. ‘Your performance today was abysmal. You’ve been out all night at bloody Misogynate again, haven’t you?’
He looked sheepish, though not particularly contrite.
‘I have, yeah,’ he said.
‘Don’t lie to me,’ I said.
‘I didn’t,’ he replied, baffled.
‘Oh...’ I said. To be honest, I’d expected him to put up a bit more of a fight. ‘There’s nothing between your ears at all, is there? Kid, I thought we had an understanding.’
‘I’m sorry, gaffer,’ he mumbled, still not sounding all that sorry. ‘It probably won’t happen again.’
‘You said that last time,’ I reprimanded him. ‘I just don’t get it – you’ve got everything going for you, the most talented footballer in the Compound, maybe even in this nebula, and yet you spend your nights on the razz in some seedy strip club. Which is especially galling given that the Compound library is right next door.’
‘You should give it a try some time,’ Gerry chipped in. ‘Expand your horizons. There are some cracking books in there.’
This was a bit of a stretch. I borrowed this one book, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea – what rubbish! I’ve been involved in the game my entire life and I know for a fact that you can’t play football under water, let alone implement any kind of league structure. Let’s get serious, please.
‘I promise it won’t affect me on Saturday when we play Groiku IV,’ Rodway said. ‘I’ll be raring to go.’
‘No, you won’t,’ I said. ‘I’m putting you on the bench. Now be on your way and think about what you’ve done. You’re on thin bloody ice, son.’
Rodway looked stunned but said nothing as he clomped off down the tunnel.
‘Crikey, Kev,’ Gerry said after a moment of tense silence. ‘Bit harsh on the lad, weren’t you?’
It’s true that I can be a bit of a disciplinarian as a manager. Back at Fulham, I regularly had the lads in for training three times a week. Even so, I know I’m prone to being a little sensitive whenever any manager’s methods are questioned. I remember back in ’76 I invited John Lennon to come and watch a Liverpool match – after our hard-fought victory I asked him what he thought of the gaffer’s game plan and he just said, ‘Imagine no possession.’ I mean, just woefully naïve tactics. Embarrassing, actually.
‘No, I don’t think I was harsh at all,’ I sniffed defiantly to Gerry. ‘Rodway has had it coming for a while – no player is bigger than the team. And I’ve always believed in tough love. Anyway, let’s go. The sooner they finish their warm-down, the sooner I can take them over for pizza and ice cream.’
I watched as Gerry jogged around the John Rudge Memorial Stadium pitch with the lads at the end of the warm-down session. The stadium had been named in honour of the former Port Vale stalwart, who had been the Compound Council’s first choice for manager once the settlement on Palangonia had been built. Sadly, poor John was reported killed during the L’zuhl invasion of Earth, and once I got the job I insisted on honouring his memory, one of so many lives we lost during that terrible episode and a fitting tribute to the great man. It later transpired that John was in fact alive and well and coaching an amateur side over on Pesquikta, a planet a couple of thousand light years away, but by then we’d already paid for the steel lettering above the stadium entrance so the name stuck.
I was lost in my thoughts – the match against Groiku IV was a big one; they were one of the real up-and-comers in Galactic League C. I still found it offensive that any human side should have to start off in the third division – we invented football, for heaven’s sake! We should have gone straight into the top flight. But nope, apparently alien communities can observe the beautiful game – unquestionably mankind’s greatest achievement – through long-distance super-powered telescopes and learn to play it for themselves and that’s enough to give them a higher ranking than us. I wrote to the top brass to complain but their reply came back in Besakrtapollian, which is a language I don’t speak and have no intention of learning. Probably just an attempt to intimidate me – everyone in the Compound knows that humans are a complete laughing stock within the Alliance because of how timidly we surrendered Earth to the L’zuhl.
I reflected on what Gerry had said. Had I been too harsh on Rodway? He was only twenty-two after all. But then, that was exactly my point – he had a glorious career in football ahead of him but only with the right guidance. I was forever exasperated back in the day by reports of my lads going out on the town and making prats of themselves – I just didn’t understand and I still don’t. Why would you want to go and get drunk when there are any number of National Trust properties you can visit? At every club I managed, that was always something I arranged on day one: annual passes for every player. It’s the gift that keeps on giving.
Gerry has always been more of an arm-round-the-shoulder kind of coach. In many ways, Gerry and I are like John and Paul – two different styles, but together, it just works. Actually, that’s a bit strong. He’s probably more of a Ringo. I suppose I could compromise and say he was a George but that would be a monumental slap in the face for the actual George.
As the lads filed past me to go and get changed before we headed to Giuseppe’s, I approached Gerry, who was trying to explain something to Andy Gill.
‘It’s all in the arms,’ Gerry said. ‘You can
’t just kick it into play like you did during the match today – that’s why it’s called a “throw-in”. Don’t worry, you’ll get there.’
‘But, Gerry, I wasn’t taking a throw-in, it was a free kick,’ Andy insisted, slightly impatiently.
‘Well, we’ll have to agree to differ on that,’ Gerry said, shoving his hands into his pockets.
‘Gerry,’ I interrupted. ‘Is Gillian in her office?’
His face darkened a little.
‘I haven’t seen her,’ he replied. ‘She’s been to several meetings of the Compound Council this week so I guess she’s been preoccupied.’
I snorted derisively.
‘Nice to know where her priorities lie, then,’ I said. ‘The club’s going to pot while she’s arsing about in meetings. Honestly, she’s the worst chair this club has ever had.’
‘Though I suppose she’s the only chair this club has ever had,’ Gerry replied.
‘Which just proves my point,’ I agreed. ‘I need to speak to her about signing a new striker. I won’t give up on Rodway, but the kid’s on the road to death and destruction so we need a plan B.’
‘Good call,’ said Gerry. ‘I’ll take the lads over to Giuseppe’s. See you there after?’
‘Wouldn’t miss it,’ I replied and hurried down the tunnel to take the elevator up to the sixth floor and Gillian’s office.
Little did I know that what would happen next would put the very future of Palangonia FC in jeopardy – and change the course of all our lives.
LOGGERHEADS
I’ve always liked Gillian’s office – I find the wood panelling on the walls oddly reassuring. My own office is a more muted affair. I’ve just got a desk in the corner and a filing cabinet which I’ve never used. It’s full of blank printer paper. Gerry suggested I set up a filing system of transfer targets, scout reports of opposition teams and tactical formations, but I don’t need all that stuff, never have. It’s all up here, committed to memory. At the end of the day, how hard is it to remember 4-4-2? My only decoration is the calendar Ray Stubbs sent me at Christmas. Every month features a different photo of Ray pointing wistfully at a distant mountain range, apart from July, which features a watercolour painting by Ray of former Premier League referee Uriah Rennie. (Listen, the lad’s clearly in a bad place. Good luck to him.)