Free Web NovelChapter 48: Kick-Off I
In the changing room I didn’t give one team talk. I gave four.
I crouched in front of the Crayford lad first, the left-back, 18 years old and white as the tape on his shin, making his debut in front of more people than he’d ever played for in his life. I didn’t talk to him about Wimbledon.
"Your mum here?" I asked.
He nodded.
"Where’s she sat?" He told me, the stand side, halfway up.
"Right. First time you get it, simplest pass you can find, give it to Baz, let him sort it. By 20 minutes you’ll have forgotten she’s even there and you’ll be playing. Trust me, I’ve done this a thousand times." First lie of the day. I’d done it once, in this body. But I’d watched it a thousand times, and that was close enough to true.
Sid I left alone almost. 38 years old, 414 appearances, a club legend with knees like gravel, and all I said to him was, "Talk to my back four, Sid. They can’t see what you can see." He grunted. He’d been organising defences since before that Crayford lad was born.
Aiden I caught by the boot rack. Aiden Reece, the bedsit ten, the brilliant left foot half the league had thrown in a skip. "When you get it deep, you don’t try to be clever," I told him. "You hit the channel for Jamie and you trust the foot. Don’t think. The foot knows. Yeah?" He gave me that crooked look he had, like he didn’t believe anyone rated him, and I held his eye until he did.
And Mooney. Chris Mooney, 29, the best pair of feet I had bar the kid, a prodigy that injuries and the drink had taken apart and left in a non-league changing room. The bomb I was still defusing. I just put a hand on the back of his neck and said, "One screw, Chris. You don’t have to be the player you were. You have to be tight for ninety minutes. One screw, all day." He didn’t say anything. But he didn’t look away either, and a fortnight ago he would have.
Then I stood up and gave the group the last thirty seconds.
"They’re better than us," I said.
"Everyone in this room knows it, everyone in that stand knows it, the bloke selling burgers in the car park knows it. Good. Let ’em be better. We’re not here to be better than Wimbledon today. We’re here to be harder to beat than they’ve got the patience for. We sit, we deny, we break. And when the chance comes, and it’ll come once, maybe twice, we put it away like our season depends on it." I let that sit. "Because it does. We’re minus 10, lads. 13 wins keeps us up. Let’s go and get the first one."
Bang. Lenny put his fist into the door on the way out and the whole frame shook.
We kicked off into the Bovril End at 3pm in front of 1,140 people, which for Tilbrook was a crowd you could hear.
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[MATCH START] Tilbrook Town vs AFC Wimbledon National League · Marsh Road · Att. 1,140 Shape: 4-1-4-1 GK: Hollis DEF: Tucker, Marsh, Doyle, the Crayford lad DM: Murphy MID: Mooney, the Crayford midfielder, Reece, Quinn ST: Vardy
Bench: the Stortford lad, Big Pete, young keeper, 2 trialists
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I’d told the truth in the changing room. They were better. For 20 minutes it was men against boys, and the men kept the ball and the boys chased shadows.
Wimbledon passed it round us in those neat little triangles good sides have, and Kedwell kept drifting off Lenny’s shoulder into that pocket, and every time he did somebody jumped out onto him the way I’d asked, and every time the hole opened where Cal Murphy should have been if Cal Murphy could be in two places, and every time my heart stopped.
On 18 minutes it nearly cost us. Kedwell wriggled off Lenny, dropped in, and I was off my seat shouting at Aiden to push up and choke the pass, go early, go now. Aiden went. The pass didn’t come.
They played round him instead and suddenly there were two of them free where Aiden had been, and only Sid’s old hands and a post kept it nil-nil.
Thwack. The ball off the upright. The whole Bovril End breathed in at once.
My read had been wrong. I’d told my best passer to go and press and they’d punished it. I sat back down and rubbed my face and made myself learn it. Not every gamble comes off. Knowing the players didn’t mean knowing the game. I still had to think, same as any other mug in a dugout, and I’d just got one wrong.
So I changed it. I waved Aiden back in, held the line, told them with my hands to be patient, stop reaching, let them have it in front of us where it couldn’t hurt. We stopped pressing and started strangling. And Wimbledon, who’d been knocking on the door, found the door had quietly turned into a wall.
On 23 minutes we broke.
It was the pattern. The pattern I’d been drilling Aiden on every morning for a fortnight until he wanted to put me in the canal, the one where he didn’t go to the ball, he went to where the second ball would drop, 10 yards behind the obvious.
They turned us over, we won it back through Cal, and Aiden was already moving, already standing in the empty grass where nobody thought to mark him because nobody but me knew he’d be there.
He took it on his left without breaking stride and clipped it, first time, over the top into the run.
And Jamie Vardy went.
Brmm. That’s the only sound I’ve got for it, the sound of a lad who runs like a getaway car. Their last man turned and it was already over, Vardy ate the 10 yards between them like they were 5, and he didn’t even break stride to finish, just opened his body and rolled it past the keeper into the far corner like he was passing it to a mate.
Roar. 1,100 people came up off the wood at once.
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[GOAL · 23’] Tilbrook 1-0 Assist: Reece (coached pattern: second-ball run) Scorer: J. Vardy · finish rated 9.4 "He breaks to the man you build the team around."
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Vardy ran to the corner and slid on his knees on the wonky grass and the whole bench piled on top of him and for about four seconds I forgot about the £400,000 and the bill and the hole and Mum. Four seconds. Then I was back on my feet shouting at them to get back into shape, because one goal up against the best team in the league is the most dangerous lead in football.
And Wimbledon’s manager was already up too, in his technical area, doing exactly what I’d have done.
He pushed his full-backs higher. Both of them, right up the pitch, pinning my wide men back so my breaks had further to run. And he switched his wingers, took the one off Bailey’s side who’d been quiet and put his livewire over there instead, straight at my 18-year-old debutant.
It was a good move. It was the move. I felt it before I saw it land, the game tilting, the pressure coming down the Crayford lad’s side because that was the soft brick in my wall.
So I slid the whole thing across. I dropped Bailey 10 yards deeper to help the kid double up, told Mooney to tuck in and cover the space that left, made the banks narrow and let them have the touchline. Give them the long way round. Make them beat eight men in a phone box.
Two managers, two technical areas, 120 yards apart, having an argument with 11 men each. That’s the game. That’s the whole game, and I’d been so busy these last 40 years dying in non-league I’d half forgotten how much I loved it.
We went in at half-time 1-0 up and I should have been buzzing. I wasn’t. I was worried, because I could see the thing I’d built holding only because Cal Murphy was running himself into an early grave to be two players, and you can’t ask a man to be two players for ninety minutes.
