The Bare Bum Gang and the Football Face-Off by Anthony McGowan

Sixteen
THE BIG MATCH
    Noah, Oliver, Luke, Jamie, The Moan and Jennifer gathered round while I gave them a last quick team talk.
    â€˜Let’s try to pass the ball. And if we can, we should probably try to score. Oh, and we should try to stop them from scoring. If we can score more goals than them, then I think we’ve got a good chance of winning. Any questions?’
    There weren’t any. I then got them all to stand in their positions. Jennifer was going to be our lone striker, taking Carl’s place.
    The opposition lined up in their half. My heart was racing. They all looked so big and strong, and we looked so weak and feeble, especially little Luke and Oliver, who were three years younger than most of the kids in Dockery’s team. It felt like we were up against a gang of giants and ogres and trolls.
    Someone shouted out, ‘OK, let’s go,’ and the next thing we knew they were all charging towards us. They hadn’t bothered with a proper kick-off. We weren’t even ready. Carl passed the ball to Dockery, who ran down the middle of the pitch towards our goal. Luke tried to tackle him, but Dockery just shoved him aside. I shouted ‘Foul’ and ‘Free kick’ but they didn’t stop. Noah tried to get to him, but he wasn’t fast enough. Then Dockery was right in front of our goal, with just Jamie in the way. Jamie’s legs were shaking, and he held his hands and the gloves with the wrong fingers out in front of him. Dockery could have easilyslid the ball past him into the net, but he decided to blast it.
    And blast it he did, right into Jamie’s face. It bounced away and went out for a corner.
    It must have hurt like mad, but Jamie didn’t cry, which made me really proud.
    There were complaints from some of Dockery’s team, but he silenced them with a glare. Larkin took the corner. I managed to get to it first and blindly whacked up the pitch, just trying to get it out of the danger zone.
    I didn’t aim for her, but it turned into a brilliant pass to Jennifer.
    All of the Dockery team except for the goalkeeper had come up into our half for the corner. The ball bounced ahead of Jennifer, rolling slowly towards their goal. She leaped after it like a racehorse. Boy, but she looked fantastic, her white kit gleaming in the sun.
    Their goalie, William Stanton, didn’tknow whether to come out to meet her or stay in his goal. The ball rolled on and Jennifer chased it down. No, not like a racehorse or a gazelle or anything like that, but like a predator, a cheetah.
    We held our breath. The Dockery Gang held their breath. The crowd held their breath. The tension hummed in the air like an electric storm.
    She was almost there now, with the ball rolling slowly, almost coming to a stop about four metres from the goal. Jennifer slowed, steadied herself and drew back her foot for what was going to be an almighty shot, a real net-breaker, a rocket, a thunderbolt.
    She swung.
    You could hear it as well as see it. A
whoosh
as her foot cut through the air at the speed of sound.
    And she completely missed the ball.
    Missed the ball, flew into the air and landed smack on her bottom on a patch of bare mud.
    I held my head in my hands.
    The Moan moaned.
    Jamie said, ‘That was rubbish.’
    Even Noah let out a little gasp of despair.
    The enemy laughed like a pack of hyenas. The crowd joined in with them. Trixie barked.
    We’d made a terrible, terrible mistake. Jennifer might be sporty, but whatever sports she was sporty at, football wasn’t one of them.
    So now not only did we have a girl on the team, we had a useless girl.
    Jennifer sat there, looking more annoyed than embarrassed, as if she blamed the ground or the ball for the fact that she’d missed it by a mile.
    Stanton jogged up and booted the ball down the pitch. That’s it, I thought, it’s going to be carnage. And in a strange way, that turned out to be right.
    Out of the corner of my