Page 12 of Playing the Field
Barbour is soon joined by a few other families, most of them the parents of the kids who’ll be helping Cassie out. And I notice a few of the Hamcott Park fans who’ve shown an interest in Crawford United down at The Fox have started arriving too. Once a small crowd has formed, a number of curious dog walkers and passers-by also stop to see what’s going on.
By this point I’ve registered twelve prospective players and have started to feel less anxious about the day ahead. Even if no one else comes, we’ve got enough players to start a team, although we might have our work cut out training the one or two who look like they probably wouldn’t last a full ninety minutes on the pitch.
Cassie splits them into two groups of six, having decided it’s the optimum number for her to be able to assess each member individually while also seeing how they work in a team, and while they’re warming up another eight hopefuls arrive. She starts assigning each player a number and giving them approximate waiting times. I can tell she’s in her element– she’s always loved being in charge.
But the arrivals don’t stop there. The closer we get to the advertised start time, the more candidates join the back of the line, until it’s trailing right across the park. When we start hearing talk of traffic backing up on the high street and a desperate hunt for parking spaces, Dad shows the first signs of panic. There are suddenly close to a hundred people in the line– we did not see this coming at all.
Marge is quickly despatched back to our house to grab Dad’s laptop and another camping chair, so we can speed up the registration process. She also has the bright idea of taking a short video of each player saying their name, to help us remember who everyone is. I rope one of the Saturday kids’ mums into doing this with my phone.
One side of our cordoned-off area quickly turns into an unofficial holding zone, where all those waiting to try out can watch the proceedings until it’s their turn. More spectators station themselves around the rest of the perimeter, and a couple of savvy teenagers take the opportunity to make a few pounds by setting up a table selling soft drinks and snacks.
It’s gratifying to see Helen from theHeraldmaking her way through the bystanders, taking photos and gathering soundbites, but it’s an effort to hide my surprise when a photographer from one of the nationals turns up with a camera that wouldn’t look out of place at a World Cup game. I’m suddenly glad I’m having a good hair day.
‘Phil.’ He holds out his hand for me to shake. ‘Helen gave me a little heads up– I hope you don’t mind. We go way back, to journalism college, so we tip each other off about a good story every now and then. And this sounded like one not to miss.’
‘It’s a pleasure to have you here,’ I manage to reply, wide-eyed.
‘Am I okay to set myself up just by the sideline here?’ Phil asks.
‘Knock yourself out,’ I tell him, as Marge turns to me and mouths ‘holy shit’. She touches her fingers against mine in a discreet high five. If ever we needed more validation, this is it.
Another drinks table springs up by the park entrance and the afternoon takes on the feel of a village fete. All that’s missing is the bouncy castle and the craft stalls. But in among it, the very serious business of finding a football team is not forgotten. Thankfully my sister is unflappable, even when we have so many players waiting to try out that we fear the park might close before we get through them all.
After each set of six has had their assessment, Cassie tells me the key observations she wants me to add to each player’s notes, covering speed, stamina, passing accuracy and goal-scoring ability. And we get the full range, from twenty-year-old Craig who trained at Arsenal’s youth academy in his early teens, all the way down to Tony, thirty-eight, who may have dreamed of being a footballer since he was twelve, but has never got further than playing FIFA on his PlayStation before today.
In hindsight we should have been a lot more specific about the required experience in our calls for candidates, but we’ll chalk that up as another lesson learned. And Cassie, bless her, treats everyone with the same level of respect and gratitude for coming, whether they excel on the pitch or not, and offers kind words to anyone who struggles under the pressure. I’m so proud of how she handles it all.
It’s almost dark by the time we wrap things up, feeling exhilarated but exhausted. We’ve been going for close to eleven hours and seen a little over two hundred players. The passers-by have long since moved on, but our devoted supporters, led by Barbour, have stayed with us to the very end, and a cheer goes up when we wave off the last group of hopefuls.
‘So when will you decide who’s made the cut?’ asks Helen, who has stuck around too, having declared herself an official fan of Crawford after seeing how we’ve handled ourselves in the face of an unexpectedly challenging day– and, if I’m honest, after one or two beers.
‘We’ve got a lot of notes to go through,’ Dad replies, expertly avoiding the question like the pro he isn’t. ‘But we’ll make an announcement as soon as we’re ready.’
Despite the long day, Phil from the nationals is still here as well, which I suspect has a lot to do with Helen. ‘I ended up taking quite a lot of video,’ he says, ‘so if you want any of it to look back over, I’d be happy to send it to you, provided you promise not to sell it or upload it.’
‘Lily C at Crawford United dot com,’ I say quickly. ‘And that would be greatly appreciated.’
Dad’s in such a good mood after the fantastic turnout today I’m surprised he doesn’t invite them back to ours for drinks. Marge, Bob, Adam and Barbour join us for congratulatory bottles of beer round the kitchen table though.
‘I think we can safely call today a success,’ Dad says, taking a swig.
Inevitably we start throwing our opinions around about which players we thought showed the most promise, until Dad’s eyelids are drooping so heavily he almost dozes off in his chair.
‘Sorry, I think the poor sleep last night might be catching up with me,’ he admits, stifling a yawn.
‘I’ll call us an Uber,’ Marge says. ‘There are a lot of decisions to make tomorrow. You need to be fresh for it.’
I wave everyone off while Dad heads straight for his duvet, and once I’m tucked up in my own bed, I instinctively reach for my phone to text Greg and tell him what a whirlwind of a day it’s been– until I remember that’s not what we do any more. So I message Phoebs instead, telling her how amazing it feels to have so many players to choose from and how I can’t wait to pick our top eleven.
While I’m waiting for her to respond, I scroll through the headlines on my phone. Ben Pryce is trending again, even though he’s still suspended from Millford City. This time it’s because he’s been spotted with a new love interest on his arm– although I hardly see how this counts as news given that he seems to date someone new virtually every week.
Phoebs’ reply pops up on my screen while I’m reading.‘OMG we’re going to be WAGs,’she’s written.‘I can’t wait to meet the team.’
I can’t help smiling.‘I’m not doing this to sort your love life out,’I tell her.
She sends the heart-eyes emoji.‘If that’s what you want to think. But I reckon the world is ready for a new Victoria Beckham.’
I can’t tell if she genuinely thinks this could happen with a player from the lowest league.
