“What happened?” asked Simon, squeezing between his parents to get a view of the pitch. Tilly poked her head through his legs to have a look too.
“Blues have got a pen,” Dad told him. “Keeper dived at the number eight’s feet and brought him down.”
“I think the boys might be hurt,” said Mum. “They’ve not got back on their feet yet.”
Simon’s heart sank. The last thing he wanted was for Anil to be injured.
The referee had already waved the teams’ teachers to come onto the pitch and check on their players. As Mr Smith jogged towards the penalty area, Mrs Gregson came along the touchline, looking for Simon.
“Ah, there you are,” she said. “Better get that tracksuit off, just in case.”
Simon sighed, and handed Tilly’s lead to Dad. He removed his top first to reveal the school’s spare green goalkeeping jersey, which was now pale and frayed through years of use. As he started to pull down his tracksuit bottoms, he realised that he had forgotten to put on any shorts.
“Er, think I’ll keep these on,” he said, blushing, as he quickly tugged the bottoms back up. “Feels a bit draughty.”
The headteacher decided that Anil’s hand needed first aid and that he would not be able to carry on.
“Sorry, you’ll have to come off, I’m afraid,” he told a dejected Anil, and beckoned towards the touchline for the substitution to be made.
“Do you have any goalie gloves?” asked Mrs Gregson.
“Don’t need them, Miss,” Simon said. “I can catch better with bare hands.”
“Good luck, son,” said Dad. “I’ll be rooting for you.”
Both Ollie and Sadiq came to meet Simon as he ran onto the pitch.
“No pressure!” grinned Ollie.
“Watch the ball, not the man,” Sadiq advised. “He might try and put you off by pretending to look the other way. Just ignore him.”
Nails wrapped an arm around Simon’s shoulders and led him towards the goal. It might well have seemed to spectators that the captain was giving the new keeper some encouragement, but they would have been wrong.
“Guess you can’t do much about the pen,” grunted Nails, and then he leant closer to hiss into his brother’s ear. “But if yer go and let in any stupid goal, Zero, you’re gonna end up in that lake, gettin’ a real good close-up view of all them ducks – geddit?”
Simon nodded – message received and understood.
Nails trudged to the edge of the penalty area, where most of the players of both teams were now strung out like a washing line of red and blue shirts. As Simon settled on the muddy goal line, he tried to shut everything out of his mind and focus all his attention on the ball. He pretended that it was a bird, sitting on the nest, and immediately he became more calm, so as not to disturb it.
“Sshhh. . .” he whispered automatically, as if telling Tilly to be quiet.
A shrill whistle pierced the silence and the bird flew away, darting towards him, just to his left. Instinctively, he dived and plucked it out of the air, cradling it in both hands against his body to stop it escaping.
Suddenly there was an explosion of sound from the crowd and Simon found himself curled around the ball in the mud. He was lifted to his feet by his excited teammates, who were all trying to mob him at the same time. A yapping Tilly joined the scrum, too – she had broken free while Dad was taking photographs.
Woof!
“Catch of the match!” cried Jake. “Now you really are a hero.”
“Break it up, Reds – let’s get on with the game,” shouted the referee. “And somebody get rid of that damn dog!”
As Simon kicked the ball away upfield, Jake grabbed hold of Tilly’s lead and tugged the pitch invader back to his dad, who had come round behind the goal.
“Brilliant save, son,” he enthused. “A real blinder!”
Simon tried to concentrate on the action in front of him, but that wasn’t easy with the stream of comments and advice from Dad.
“Watch that little winger, son. She’s quick.”
Simon soon saw that for himself. When the winger ran past her marker again and curled the ball into the goalmouth, Simon leapt high to make a clean catch.
“That’s the way, son. That showed ’em.”
The Reds had not yet managed to cause the opposing goalkeeper any problems and it seemed to the spectators only a matter of time before the Princes increased their lead. The next chance, however, fell to Ollie, who was more surprised than anyone to find the ball at his feet and the goal at his mercy. He panicked – and scooped the ball over the crossbar.
Ollie squatted on his haunches, hands on bowed head, wishing that the ground would open up and swallow him to cover his blushes. He could even hear some laughter from the opposition defenders – and especially Connor.
“Bet yer face is as red as yer hair!” he mocked. “What a waste of space!”
“C’mon, get up,” came another voice. “It’s not the end of the world.”
Ollie looked up to see Katie offering him a helping hand.
“Thanks,” he murmured, scrambling to his feet like a new-born, leggy calf. “Just feels like it, that’s all. I should’ve equalised there – dead easy.”
“All strikers miss – even me,” she told him with a grin. “But the best ones aren’t afraid of missing. We just expect to score next time instead.”
It was Connor, though, who was soon to find the net, with Ollie perhaps at fault once more. When the Princes won a corner, their captain barged his marker, Ollie, out of his way to head the ball beyond Simon’s reach. His celebrations were so loud that he failed to hear the whistle.
“No goal,” said the referee, making pushing gestures to show everyone why it had been disallowed. “Foul on the number nine.”
Connor snorted his disgust and started to argue with the official, who waved him away with a warning. Ollie, meanwhile, was being hauled up again, but this time none too gently, by Nails.
“You let that kid climb all over yer,” the skipper complained. “Looked like yer were givin’ him a piggy-back!”
“You mark him at the next corner, then,” Ollie retorted.
“Huh! Don’t worry, I will. If yer want summat doin’ properly, do it yerself.”
A few minutes later, not long before the half-time interval, Nails took responsibility for something far more important – a penalty.
Connor was still cross about what had happened at the other end and made a wild lunge at Sadiq, who had tried to dribble past him into the box. Connor’s studs made no contact with the ball but ripped open Sadiq’s left sock and his shinpad too. He inspected the damage, relieved that the skin was not broken and there was no blood.
Katie was cheeky enough to collect the stray ball, as if she were going to take the spot-kick herself, but Nails snatched it from her.
“No way!” he told her. “This is mine.”
“Just make sure you score,” she said, pulling a face.
“No trouble.”
In truth, Nails felt nowhere near as confident as he tried to appear, and took his time placing the ball on the penalty spot, ignoring the abuse he was getting from Connor and their goalkeeper. He had scored lots of times in practices against Anil or Jake, but this felt very different. This one mattered.
Nails stood up slowly, wiped his hands down the sides of his shorts, took several steps backwards and breathed deeply to help steady his nerves. When the whistle went, he ran forward and struck the ball powerfully with his right instep.
Whack!
To Nails’ horror, he’d hit the ball too straight. The keeper parried it with his arms in front of his face, almost in self-defence, and the ball bounced away out of reach. Nails was in too much of a state of shock to react fast enough, and someone else beat him to the rebound – Katie!
She was quicker off the mark than anyone else, too, stretching out a silver boot to stab the loose ball past the keeper into the net. A defender’s boot had caught her on the ankle and she was in too much pain to perform her usual gymnastics after scoring.
Instead, Katie found herself lifted clean off her feet by Nails
“You little beauty!” he cried with relief.