“Reckon you’ve got this game won,” said Ollie, as the Reds pinned the opposition back in their own half. “You’ve got ’em on the run.”
“It’s we, remember, not you,” Simon corrected him, grinning. “You’re one of us now. Well – at least from Monday, you will be.”
“Yeah, right,” he laughed, and shouted across the pitch, “C’mon, Reds, we can do it!”
Emma looked across to the touchline. “Who’s the beanpole next to your kid?”
Nails shrugged. “Dunno.”
“You OK?” she asked. “You’ve gone dead white.”
“Never felt better,” he lied.
The next thing Emma knew, the captain was down on his haunches, being sick in the centre-circle.
“Do you want to go off?” she said.
Nails stood up, wiped his mouth and glared at her.
“What do you think, stupid?” he retorted. “Watch the ball, not me.”
With the ball at the other end of the pitch, few people had seen the incident, but one of those was the headteacher.
“Are you all right, Kevin?” called out Mr Smith.
“Oh, God!” Nails groaned. “Not him as well.” He pretended that he hadn’t heard the question and kept his eyes fixed on what was happening in the opposition penalty area. The Reds’ move had broken down as Katie lost the ball, and the Saints immediately broke away to launch their own swift counter-attack. Nails and Emma soon found themselves outnumbered.
“Get back!” screamed Nails at the other defenders, who had been caught too far upfield. “Stop ’em!”
It was too late. The green shirts swarmed forwards, switching the ball between them and drawing Emma out of position. Nails simply did not have the pace or the energy to fill the gaps and even his attempted trip failed to work. The exposed Anil was given no chance to prevent the goal and seemed to make little effort to do so.
“Looks like I came to the wrong place,” Ollie muttered. “You’ve gone and thrown it away.”
“Oi! It’s back to you again, is it?” said Simon. “What’s happened to we, all of a sudden?”
Ollie shrugged. “Soz, I was just starting to look forward to the final against my old school.”
“Don’t give up yet,” Simon told him. “You don’t know my brothers.”
Fortunately, it did not take long for the Reds to score again – and there was quite a lot of fortune about their second equaliser. Good luck for them, but bad luck for the poor Saints’ defender, who stuck out a leg to clear Katie’s cross but deflected the ball past his own goalkeeper into the net instead.
With time running out, the visitors seemed to have done enough to earn a 2-2 draw and a replay at home. They probably thought that they deserved it, too, but Nails had other ideas. When Jake won a corner-kick and was preparing to take it quickly by playing the ball short to Katie, Nails shouted to them to wait as he jogged upfield.
“Stay back, Kevin,” cried Mr Smith. “We can’t give away another goal.”
Mrs Gregson did not quite know what advice to give. In truth, she was not that bothered about which side won, so long as it wasn’t a draw. She didn’t really fancy having to organise another game, if the headteacher were still off school the following week.
The looming presence of Nails in the Saints’ penalty box caused some alarm and argument among their defenders, especially as no one was keen to mark the big, sick-stained captain too closely.
“On me ’ead!” Nails shouted to his brother, finding himself in unexpected space.
Jake did his best to oblige, but the keeper was brave enough to come out and try to catch the ball. He also had one eye on Nails, though, perhaps expecting to get clattered in mid-air, and he failed to hold on. The dropped ball caused total panic. There were so many bodies trying to kick and block it at the same time, that the ball ricocheted about the goalmouth as if in a crazy game of table football.
Twice the ball was hacked off the line, once it rebounded from the post but, when it suddenly appeared in front of Nails, he lashed the loose ball home with such force that it ripped the netting from two of the hooks that fixed it onto the crossbar.
“The winner!” he screamed, and collapsed on the ground.
The captain was eventually hauled to his feet, but he was clearly in no fit state to carry on. He was helped from the pitch by the headteacher while Mrs Gregson replaced him with her only remaining substitute.
“You’ll have to play on the wing,” she told Simon. “I can’t swap goalies at this late stage.”
He unzipped his tracksuit to reveal a green top. “I haven’t got a red shirt,” he confessed.
“Put your brother’s on.”
Nails was too weary to complain and tossed his sweaty, smelly shirt to Simon. It made him feel sick as he pulled it over his head.
“Just stay out the way, kid,” Nails warned him. “Don’t mess it up.”
Simon assumed that Nails meant the match rather than the shirt, but the ball did not even come near him in the couple of minutes that were left. He wandered along the touchline, still in his long tracksuit bottoms that he had not had time to take off, and his best moment was when he took the chance to fuss Tilly while the Saints strove desperately for a late equalizer.
“I don’t think she understands what you’re doing there,” Ollie grinned, tickling Tilly behind the ears to comfort the dog.
“That makes two of us,” Simon muttered.
The Saints wasted their last chance when a close-range shot was hit straight at Anil, who managed to cling on to the ball. Then the referee blew the final whistle.
“Wicked!” whooped Ollie. “A 3-2 win!”
Simon immediately tugged off his shirt and offered it first to Tilly, who took one sniff and wrinkled her nose in disgust. He dropped it on the ground next to Nails.
“You’re a real star, Zero! Don’t reckon we could’ve done it without you.”
Simon was used to the sarcasm and ignored it.
“Meet Captain Kevin, my big brother,” he said to his new friend. “This is Ollie, who’s starting at our school next week, so he can play for us in the Final now.”
Nails was still propped up on his elbows and he looked Ollie up and down – which was a long way for his eyes to travel.
“Can he really?” he drawled. “He looks like more like a matchstick to me, with that red hair. I hate red hair. Clashes with our kit.”
Ollie did not know how to reply, so Simon spoke instead.
“Right, join the club, Ollie. He hates everything, so you’ll fit in just fine.”
Dad came up at that point, to tell them he had to return to the shop in time for the lunchtime rush.
“Great goal, Kev,” he said, using his real name for once. “I’ll go and watch the Final, of course, and I’ll try to get your mother to come too, eh?”
“You brought us good luck again, Dad,” Jake said, and grinned. “And you nearly saw all of us on the pitch at the same time.”
“That can wait for the Final now,” Dad said, and turned to Simon. “Well, at least I was here when you made your school team debut, son.”
Simon nodded. Somehow it didn’t really feel like a proper debut when he hadn’t even had a kick of the ball.
Nails had the last word. “Yeah, blink and you missed it,” he muttered.