For a moment, Fred thought Mr Barrington must have rumbled him: that he must know that he had, in a way, cheated, because he sounded a bit like teachers did when they were being sarcastic – like Mr Barrington, having heard Fred whispering in class, was mockingly inviting him to come up and tell everyone all about the great things he had to say.

But then Fred realised, looking at the sports teacher’s friendly if fishy eyes, that Mr Barrington wasn’t being sarcastic; that he genuinely thought that it was amazing how well Fred had played and that he really wanted him to tell the rest of the school how he had done it.

Fred nodded to himself; he looked to Ellie, who still had her hands up and was also now smiling at him hopefully; and so he took a deep breath and said loudly, making sure everyone could hear him: “I don’t know really, Mr Barrington. I suppose I just have a talent – an amazing talent – that I was born with.”

A ripple of applause greeted this.

“Talent, though, needs hard work to make it all it can be.”

He saw Mr Barrington nod and heard some people in the crowd say, “Yes … very wise.”

“So maybe up till now,” Fred continued, “if I was really being honest with myself, I’d have to say I haven’t truly been doing the hard work. But now I have – I’ve finally put in the time and the sweat and practised hard. And yes, it’s paid off because …”

The ripple of applause started building, and building, and building. Fred raised a fist in the air: “… now it’s my time to shine!!”

The crowd erupted into a massive roar. Mr Barrington was applauding. Fred’s team-mates were applauding. Even the defeated Geary Road team were applauding.

The only person who wasn’t applauding – who was in fact walking away sadly – was Ellie. Fred watched her go. He wanted to call after her. He wanted to tell her that he had only said that because he didn’t know what else to say. That he’d got carried away with the moment. He wanted to say sorry. But all that was quite hard to do because:

a) she was already quite far away

b) the crowd were cheering and chanting, “Fred! Fred! Fred!” so she wouldn’t have heard him above it

and

c) just as he opened his mouth to shout after her, Prajit’s legs finally went and Fred toppled headlong into Mr Barrington, knocking him, and his rhino-foot-lens glasses, into the mud.