1.25 - Drills (Patreon)

25.

Wednesday was, quietly, invisibly, monumental.

It was the day when I was due to take a training session with Beth's team. But I had a surprise for them. They were in their kit, stretching a calf or a hamstring or slowly turning their neck left and right, keeping one eye on me, waiting for me to get on with my hare-brained scheme. I'd asked Beth to rustle up a couple more players if poss. She'd come through. As well as the usual mob, there was Eva, a very tall, gangly defender, and Anna, a ginger-haired German winger.

I was flanked by two men.

"All right, Met Heads," I said. "It's speech o'clock. When I first met you - "

"Max," said Beth. "we've got the hall for one hour. Get on with it."

"Fine," I said. "This is Jackie. He's a coach. He's going to do some drills. End of speech."

"Very efficient, Max," said Jackie. "All right - "

"Wait," said Beth. "Who's this guy?"

I followed her finger. "That's Ziggy. I don't know why he's here."

Ziggy looked embarrassed. "I didn't believe when Max said he was coaching a women's team. I thought - I don't know what I thought. But Jackie told me I might as well come and get some extra practice in. If that's okay with you guys."

"Anyone suspicious of Max is a friend of mine," said Beth.

Ziggy unzipped his top, flung it away, and cast off his tracksuit bottoms. Keen!

Jackie started the women off with a light jog. But Ziggy didn't join in. He and Jackie were hovering around me, almost menacingly. Ziggy picked up a plastic bag and handed it to me.

"What's this?" I said, scared to poke my head in.

"Kit," said Jackie. "Get changed."

"Come on, man," I said. "This is for them." I indicated the Met Heads.

"Get changed, Secret Agent," demanded Jackie. "Or I'm leaving. I'm here to satisfy my curiosity."

"You're here because I said I'd pay you a hundred quid," I said. Ziggy's eyes nearly popped out.

"Yeah, which I'll never see."

"You will. Eventually. Once my bonds mature."

"Until then, you're in the session. Hurry up." I didn't really have much of a choice. I slunk away towards the changing rooms. "No, no, no time for that. Do it here."

He wanted me to change in front of the women. Put me in my place? I slipped my shoes off, pulled my trousers down (waiting three seconds so everyone could get an eyeful), then pulled the shorts on. Before taking my jacket off I rummaged in the bag and pulled out the top they'd brought. It was light blue with a circular club crest and a familiar airline sponsor. "Man City top? Are you fucking insane? There's no way I'm wearing this."

"We knew you'd say that," said Jackie. He unzipped his big sports bag and pulled out a red one. That was more like it. He threw it at me.

I caught it, then immediately dropped it like it was a bag of acid. Gingerly, I picked it up between thumb and forefinger. "City or Liverpool? Is this your idea of fun?"

"Yeah," said Ziggy, delighted.

"I'd rather play in skins," I said. Skins meant shirtless.

"They'd like that, too, I reckon," said Jackie. "Any which way you choose, someone wins." He looked at his watch. "Chop, chop."

I looked at my options. Who did I hate more? With a shudder, I took my jacket and shirt off and pulled on the Liverpool top. At the bottom of the plastic bag was a pair of indoor sports trainers in my size. How had they known?

Jackie brought a whistle to his mouth. He looked me in the eye, blew out a sharp peep, and gave me a little wink. "Line up, ladies!"

***

The first drill was simple. We formed two lines, facing each other. I was in front of Lula. We just had to pass the ball back and forth. No probs. But I couldn't focus - I was getting tons of information.

First, Beth's CA jumped from 1 to 2. Lula and Freyja's too. That's what I'd been hoping for, but I couldn't have imagined it'd happen so soon!

Next, now that Ziggy was training instead of forcing me into his weird cross-dressing fantasy, I could see his attributes. And they boggled my mind!

Barrett Graves     

Born 13.1.1999 (Age 23) English   

• Acceleration 3
• Bravery 4
• Dribbling 2
• Finishing 16
• Heading 6
• Jumping 6
• Pace 3
• Passing 5
• Stamina 4      
• Strength 6       
• Tackling 3             
• Technique 5              
• preferred foot R                        
• CA 6 PA 58     
• Striker

His CA had soared to 6, his stamina, technique, and passing had all improved by one point. And best of all, his jumping had gone up! Had the absolute madman been bouncing on his bed for hours on end because I told him to?

And he just looked... healthier. More confident. More like a footballer. Maybe he'd had a tan sprayed on. Maybe -

"Max!" snapped a voice. Jackie telling me off for not concentrating. But I was doing my half of the drill. It was beyond simple. I looked up and down the line of players and there were a few errant passes. Why couldn't they play a five-yard pass under no pressure?

As I watched, several passing attributes turned green. What the shit?!

Jackie was behind me. He (gently) put his hands on my head and pointed it towards Lula. "Focus."

How can I focus? There's too much going on!

I tried my best, though. I really, really looked at Lula and I really, really looked at the ball.

The whistle blew. Jackie had seen enough. The next drill was a little more advanced. He had some big lengths of string that he handed out, and told us to form them into a circle. "How big?" asked one of the women. "As big as the string," he said, with more patience than the question deserved.

Now each player was standing in a circle of maybe three metre diameter. Pretty wide. Jackie selected Beth to demonstrate on. He kicked the ball at her - fairly hard - and her job was to control the ball with one touch such that it would stay in the circle. Beth controlled the first one perfectly. The second Jackie hit at knee height and that bounced off Beth and hit the far wall. The third he chipped up to her chest, and she controlled it nicely and the ball landed at her feet. Not bad!

I was nodding in approval when I saw Beth's technique score increase. It scrambled my brain so much that I didn't hear Jackie's next instruction. Poor Lula had to come over and give me a nudge. She wanted me to kick the ball at her. I tried to copy what Jackie had done - low and hard, at the knee, onto the chest. Lula actually did better than Beth, but her technique didn't increase. That was a disappointment. Could Jackie improve players when he coached them one-on-one? But I couldn't? No, that wasn't it - ladies left and right were getting green technique numbers whether Jackie was watching or not.

Lula called over. "Time to switch."

"No," I said. "You go again."

She shrugged and I repeated the drill - low, knee, chest. This time, Lula only controlled one out of three, but now her technique score did increase! I was happy for her, but felt like I understood what was happening even less than before.

Jackie blew his whistle and everyone looked over at him. "Grab a hoop," he said. We all went to the side of the hall where he'd placed loads of hula hoops. They weren't the ones that were slightly bigger than your hips - they were sort of extra-wide. But still much smaller than the string circles. "Increasing the difficulty, yeah? Put the hoop inside your string. That's your new boundary. Try to keep the ball in there."

Everyone went again, three shots each. I didn't want to improve my technique, so I kept pinging balls at Lula. I took the pace down a bit so that she'd be more able to do it.

Jackie blew the whistle. I looked around - almost everyone had improved their technique score, and everyone who had PA more than 1 was now on at least CA 2. In short - they were reaching their potential!

"Very good, very good," Jackie said. "Something you can do on your own to keep your skills sharp. But with all due respect to you ladies, I didn't come here to watch Max Best skive off."

"Huh?" I said.

"You in your circle? Good." He got a ball and was about to kick it to me. Jesus Christ! He had this real bee in his bonnet about how I should do a trial instead of Ziggy. It was irritating. I decided to flunk the test and get him off my back. He hit the first ball and I crouched and stuck my foot out. The ball bounced off and away. He hit the next one a bit higher. I pretended to bring my thigh towards the ball and use it to deaden the impact, but the ball 'accidentally' hit my knee and boinged off. Jackie scrunched up his lips and walked over to me. He didn't stand in front of me like a normal human. He sort of went beside me and barely turned his head and spoke in a whisper. "I'll take a lot of things, Max. Loose passes, bad shots, bad days at the office. But I won't stand for not trying." We made eye contact. I looked away. "So what's it going to be?"

"I asked you here to coach the girls," I hissed. "It's not about me. You're wasting time."

"I'm not doing another thing till you show me what you’ve got."

"Jesus Fucking Christ," I said. Again, I didn't have much choice. To get what I wanted, I had to give him what he wanted. "Fine."

He went back to his spot and got a ball ready. He slapped it at me, extra hard. I let my right foot cushion the impact - it dropped dead. I passed it back to him. He hit it, with curve, towards my left knee. I bent and caught it on my thigh. Passed it back. He hit it with staggering violence right at my throat. I jumped, let the ball impact my chest, and while it popped up above my head, I turned and waited for gravity to take its course. As it landed, I crunched it under my foot.

I turned again and glared at Jackie. "Next drill," I said.

While Jackie and some others put away the hoops and collected the balls, Beth sidled up to me. "Come to the toilet," she said.

"Huh?"

"Toilet. Quick."

I eyed her. "You're horny. Now?"

"That was hot. That was... that was like two stags butting against each other."

I shook my head. "Demented."

She nudged me. "And you won."

This was the stupidest thing I'd ever heard, and I made no attempt to hide that fact. "No, Beth," I said. "He did."