Golden Goal (12 page)

 

 

It was a Friday and, as Jamie watched the Hawkstone players train ahead of their big weekend game, his mind drifted towards Mike. He had loved the Hawks his entire life; he would have been so proud that Jamie was now working at the club.

“You know,” said Archie, who was standing alongside Jamie, gulping down yet another mug of tea, “I won't be doing this job for ever. If you play your cards right, one day you could take over from me...”

Jamie smiled and was just about to respond when Harry Armstrong suddenly blew his whistle on the training pitch and bellowed: “Hey, Cloughie!”

“Yes, boss! What can I do for you?” asked Archie.

“Your assistant – I need him in goal for the last five minutes; we're one man down.”

It wasn't until he felt Archie's eyes resting on him that Jamie realized Harry Armstrong had been talking about him.
He
was the assistant that they wanted to go in goal…

Jamie felt panic surge through him. He didn't know what to do. He was being asked to play football again. And that was unleashing a whole tide of emotions in him.

Jamie started to breathe in and out rapidly. He turned to look at Archie for guidance.

“Well, go on, then!” encouraged Archie. “It's only five minutes!”

Jamie had no option. Only a complete loser would turn down an opportunity like this.

Hesitantly, he jumped over the railings that surrounded the training pitch. Then, with his head down, he half jogged, half walked to the empty goals.

“Come on! Get a move on!” the Hawkstone players were shouting at him.

They couldn't see that Jamie's whole body was shaking with nerves.

“Here you are, son,” said Bob Hurst, the Hawkstone goalkeeping coach, throwing Jamie a pair of gloves. “You'll need these.”

 

 

Jamie stood in the middle of the goal and clapped his gloved hands together. He jumped up and touched the underside of the crossbar.

He didn't know exactly why he did it – he'd just seen other keepers do it, so he felt as though it was the right thing to do.

He just hoped he wouldn't embarrass himself – or Archie, who was watching from the sidelines like a nervous father.

Jamie rubbed his back. For the first time in weeks, it was starting to hurt. Then he thought about the screws that were holding his leg together. He wondered if they were up to this.

Oh, just shut up and enjoy the game!
Jamie shouted to his inner demons. He sounded almost like Mike.

Jamie only knew one thing. As the training match got restarted, he felt something that he hadn't felt for months: alive.

To start with, Jamie didn't have that much to do. He came to collect a couple of crosses and even made quite a professional-looking throw out to the full-back.

He was just starting to think this goalkeeping lark was easy, when he was presented with a much sterner test.

Glenn Richardson, who was playing against Jamie, had struck a sixty-yard through-ball for the striker to chase.

Jamie was already a few yards off his line and he thought that he could get to the ball first, so he came out of his area to clear it. But when the backspin on Richardson's pass kicked in, Jamie realized he was in trouble...

It was too late to run back in goal and he was out of his area now so he couldn't pick the ball up either.

The only option he had left was to try and win the race for the ball. But he was clearly second-favourite.

Jamie put his head down, pumped his arms and sprinted towards the ball.

And then something amazing happened.

For those couple of seconds, Jamie felt no pain whatsoever in his body. Every bone, muscle and sinew responded to the situation and Jamie's speed clicked back into gear as though it had never been away. He shot across the turf with pace and grace.

He was sprinting at such speed that not only did he win the race to the ball, but now, with the ball at his feet, he didn't want to stop! He just kept going!

Jamie powered forward at an unbelievable speed.

If he had looked up at that moment, he would have seen Archie Fairclough punching the air with joy. He was so excited that he'd chucked his mug of tea high into the air. As it dropped, it splashed its contents all over the paint on the touchline.

But Jamie's mind was closed to everything that was going on around him. In fact, he wasn't thinking at all. He was simply doing the one thing he truly knew he could do in this world: run with a football.

As he raced down the pitch, Jamie just seemed to be getting faster and faster. He got all the way to the other touchline and whipped in a beautiful, curling cross to the far post…

It was a sensational centre. But no one was there to meet it. Because they had all stopped playing.

Instead, every single Hawkstone player was simply standing, staring at Jamie. They were in awe of what they had just seen.

It was as though, for those few seconds, Jamie had been in some kind of trance.

But now he had returned to his senses. He looked back towards the empty goal that he had vacated and suddenly realized that he had sprinted the entire length of the pitch at his very top speed.

He'd had no idea his body could still do that.

But it just had.

“Jamie Johnson! I knew you still had it!” Harry Armstrong suddenly yelled, breaking the silence.

Jamie looked up.

“What? How did you know my—”

“Of course I know who you are,” said Harry, laughing. “Archie told me the first day you walked in here. I've just been waiting for him to tell me that you were ready.”

Jamie immediately looked across at Archie. The wink he received in return told Jamie everything. Archie had known all along…

 

 

“The MRI scans show that all the injuries have entirely healed,” said Alistair Ramsey, Hawkstone's chief doctor. “And the agility levels are … well … hugely impressive. Are you sure you haven't played any football since the accident, Jamie?”

“I promise I haven't,” said Jamie, smiling. He hadn't been able to stop grinning since he'd kicked that football. “The only exercise I've been doing is all the stuff Archie has made me…”

It was only as he said the words that Jamie fully appreciated what had been happening over the last few months. All that lifting, carrying and painting… It had all been part of Archie's plan. Slowly but surely, he'd been nurturing Jamie's recovery. Restoring him back to full fitness.

“Well, I can only tell you that your core stability is as good as, if not better than, eighty per cent of the players in our First Team squad,” stated Dr Ramsey.

Jamie and Harry Armstrong sat, listening intently to the doc's analysis. The minute training had finished, Harry had asked Jamie to come to the medical centre to get a full diagnosis.

But now Dr Ramsey had stopped talking.

“And?” asked Armstrong. “Does that mean he's OK to play?”

“I'm afraid it's not quite as simple as that, Harry.”

“What do you mean ‘it's not that simple'? Either he's fit to play or he's not.”

“Let me try and explain,” said Dr Ramsey. “Physically, medically even, Jamie is a hundred per cent fit. But where traumas like this have occurred you never truly know the strength of the joint or bone until they are tested … taken to the limit, if you like.

“It may be that Jamie is completely fine, good as new. But it may also be that there is a weakness there and, if he were to sustain a trauma to either his back or leg again, this time, the injuries could be … well, I'm afraid there's no other way to say it … irreversible.”

Dr Ramsey seemed to linger for an impossibly long time over the word
irreversible
. Then he looked up and concluded: “Basically, we'll only know when his body is put to the ultimate test.”

“By which time it could be too late?” asked Harry Armstrong.

But it wasn't really a question.

As Dr Ramsey left the room, Harry Armstrong looked at Jamie.

“I'm going to be completely honest with you, Jamie,” he said. “As a football manager, I'm desperate to have you in my team. I watched you in that Youth Cup Final and I've never seen anything like it. In football terms, it's a no-brainer. You go straight into my First Team squad. That's how good I believe you are. And … God knows we need you...

“But this is not a simple decision, Jamie. We both heard what the doc said – there are serious risks in you playing football again. The question is: are you prepared to take those risks?”

 

 

“Please tell me you're joking,” said Jeremy, striding around the room like a madman. Jamie had told his mum and Jeremy everything that had happened and that Hawkstone were prepared to put him on a temporary playing contract. He and Jeremy had been arguing for the last half an hour.

“Am I the only one who can see what's happening here?” Jeremy continued. “So he starts playing again and then he gets rejected – or worse still, injured – and what's he left with then? Nothing. Zilch.
Again
… No qualifications, no future, nothing. I say he starts back at school in September and—”

“Oh, for God's sake, Jeremy – it's his dream!” Jamie's mum suddenly declared. “Sometimes you
have
to take a risk to get what you want.”

Then she went into the kitchen. Discussion over.

Jamie's mouth hung wide open. So did Jeremy's. Neither of them had ever seen her be so decisive.

For a while, Jamie couldn't work it out. His mum never seemed to take his side any more and now she'd just supported him in the biggest gamble of his life. And then a memory from when he was really young elbowed its way into Jamie's mind, and it explained a lot.

One day, when he'd just started going to school, Jamie had come home one afternoon and asked his mum what the word
motto
meant.

“It's a saying,” she'd explained. “An idea that you try to live your life by. Like:
you don't regret what you
do
do, only what you don't.
That's my motto,” she'd smiled. “I think it's a good one.”

The next day, Jamie was in the office of the Hawkstone Club Secretary, Eugene Elliott. In front of him was a short-term playing contract.

“Where do I sign, Mr Elliott?” asked Jamie.

“Don't you want to negotiate first?” Eugene Elliott laughed. “Have you got an agent?”

“I don't have an agent any more,” Jamie responded. He'd been down that path once before already. “It's not about the money for me.”

“Wow,” said Eugene Elliott, handing Jamie a pen. “You really are a different breed!”

“I just want to play football,” Jamie said. “For Hawkstone.”

Then he signed the contract.