Page 131 of Trying Sophie

Chapter Thirty-Five

Declan

When you’reat the top, a post-match press conference can be long and arduous. When you’re at the bottom, they are even worse, especially when the press smelled blood in the water.

“What went wrong out there tonight?”

“We allowed Liverpool some very easy scores,” Coach McCarthy told the press pool following a loss I took a lot of blame for. “We gave away too many penalties; our scrum was weak; and our defense let us down, especially from experienced players who should know better.”

His eyes slid my way and then back to crowd.

“After halftime we tried to force things, which is very uncharacteristic play from this lot, but we just couldn’t find our way out of the situation. We’re all disappointed. I’m not going to lie to you—it’s one of our worst performances in three seasons. I dare say the lads would agree.”

That sounded about right. The match had been excruciating. When I wasn’t getting drilled in the ribs, they came straight for my head. At one point I thought I was done for, but after passing my head injury assessment, Coach had kept me on the field, which had come as a surprise since I was one of the “experienced lads” who was giving one of the worst performances of his career.

I’d fucked up tonight and now they were looking to lay the blame at my feet. Rightly so, but it still sucked.

“Declan, what about you?” reporter Fergus O’Shea asked with a little too much enthusiasm.

The man hated me. He’d always thought I was too immature to take on a leadership role with the team at such a young age and wasn’t shy about voicing his skepticism. He also liked to bring up my personal life whenever he could, as if my exploits off the field meant jack shit to my capabilities on it.

“Are you disappointed with your performance today? From where I sat, it looked like your head wasn’t in the match at all.”

Yes, I was disappointed with my performance, fuckwit.

“Do I look happy to you, Fergus? No one on this squad is happy with how things turned out tonight.”

I took a drink of water to give myself a moment to quiet my inner rage. As much as I hated the pompous windbag, it wouldn’t do me or the squad any favors to go off on him in public.

“Look, we thought we were in a good place during the week, our training looked really positive. But we started trying too hard when we were down 19 to nine. We gave it our all, but it just wasn’t good enough. We all recognize where things went wrong. Handling mistakes, inaccuracies with our set piece, collapsed mauls, it was all there. I take responsibility for the role I played in that.”

“And what role did you play, Coach, in tonight’s loss? Could you have set up a different sort of game?”

The reporter asking had it in for Coach. Finn Connelly should have retired by now to spend time with his poodles, but when our club went through a major shakeup a few seasons ago and a whole new coaching team was brought in, he pushed his retirement off. I swear, taking the piss out of our coaching staff breathed new life into the smug bastard. For as much as he claimed to be a fan, the fat old arse was happy when we lost because it gave him an opportunity to call out our coaching. That opportunities were rare only made it worse.

“Like I said earlier, we had very experienced guys make very uncharacteristic mistakes. I’m man enough to count myself among that group. Once things start poorly, it can build up momentum until you just can’t come back from it. That’s what happened tonight,” Coach responded calmly. “To be fair to Liverpool, they played well. They came out hungry. We knew going in they weren’t going to just roll over; they wanted the win and it showed. Almost every time they got inside our 22, they scored. We let it happen, but even if our defense had been solid, they still would have gotten on the board. They played well and we didn’t. Next question.”

“Are you worried about a repeat performance come Saturday?” another reporter asked.

I let Coach field it because I was tired of talking, tired of apologizing for not playing up to my potential, tired of knowing I’d failed my teammates and our fans because I couldn’t get thoughts of a woman out of my head.

“We know what went wrong, but we also know how to fix it. This week’s training will focus on setting those things to rights. We’ve got Bordeaux next week and they’re a very rough, physical team. We always knew this pool was going to be a challenge. This loss makes it that much more difficult. Now if you’ll excuse us ….”

We stood together and walked through the double doors, away from the press, and back to the changing room.

My shoulders slumped and Coach reached over and clasped my arm.

“You okay Declan?”

“Yeah Coach.”

“Really? Because I gotta say, you don’t look okay. On the field earlier tonight or right now.”

“I’m just angry for fucking it all up out there.”

He peered at me with assessing eyes. “It certainly wasn’t like you.”

“No, it wasn’t. And I don’t plan to make a habit of it either,” I answered. “There’s no excuse for how I played but it won’t happen again.”

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