Page 71 of Playing the Field
Dad shakes his head. ‘We can’t do that– it’s too dangerous.’
‘Not if nobody’s moving,’ Bob points out, just as we manage to crawl forward another few metres. But then we grind back to a standstill.
It’s not long before the drivers up ahead start switching off their engines and getting out to stretch their legs. When one of them comes to knock on the coach door, Dad opens it, thinking it must be a fan wanting to meet the team. But it turns out the man, who looks to be in his seventies, hasn’t even noticed my artwork in the windows.
‘I don’t suppose I could use your toilet, could I?’ he asks. ‘I’m an old bugger and I don’t think I can last however long it’s going to take for the road to clear. I’m bloody bursting!’
Elliot stifles a snigger as Cassie moves aside to let him pass. ‘And there we were thinking we were famous.’
The man does clock all the matching shirts as he walks along the aisle, though.
‘Hang on a minute, are you that new football team? I’ve seen you in the papers. Are you on your way to a match somewhere?’
‘Windham Park,’ Thomas tells him. ‘You should come and watch us. It’s going to be a classic.’
‘If I didn’t have my granddaughter’s birthday party, I absolutely would. I used to love going to the football back in the day.’ The man smiles. ‘I’ll spare you a thought while I’m blowing up balloons. And let’s hope we all get to our destinations in good time today.’
‘I’m through,’ I call out, pointing at my phone and gesturing for some quiet while I explain the situation to my counterpart at Windham. When I’m done I let everyone know, with a sigh of relief, that he’s happy to push the start time back for up to an hour and has just requested that we keep him posted on our estimated arrival time.
‘So do we stay put and hope things get moving or do we cut our losses now, leave you with the coach and get the rest of us walking?’ I ask Dad.
‘I think we should wait, now we’ve got a bit of time,’ he replies. ‘We don’t want everyone’s legs to be knackered before we even get to kick-off.’
At that point our elderly guest reappears, thanks us profusely for helping him out and says he hopes karma repays us with a win. I’d be happy enough if it could repay us with a way out of this traffic jam.
Once he’s departed, Aaron asks, ‘Can we all jump out and get some air? It’s pretty stuffy in here.’
‘I don’t think your insurance covers standing outside your vehicle in the middle of a motorway,’ I point out. ‘But as it’s pretty warm in here, I’m going to say yes, as long as you stay in front of the coach at all times and promise to be vigilant.’
‘Watch out for motorbikes,’ Dad adds. ‘In case anyone’s trying to weave their way through this lot. It’s a shame I don’t work for a moped hire firm. We could all have zipped up the middle in a convoy.’
With all the purple shirts grouped together out on the road, a couple of fans who are stranded ahead of us realise this is the team coach and wander over to say hello. They’re delighted to hear the match will be delayed.
‘We debated whether to do the away games as well or just stick to the home ones and we were starting to think we’d made the wrong decision,’ one says.
To show them how grateful we are for their support and the effort they’ve made, I offer them free tickets to our next two away games. Hopefully this will get them in the habit. At the very least they go back to their car with smiles on their faces.
We’ve sold close to seven hundred tickets in advance for this fixture, which may be significantly less than last week’s numbers, but is still pretty epic for an away game, given the travel cost and effort needed to get there. Windham has granted us a whopping fifty per cent of its two-thousand-capacity ground for this match– five times the typical allocation for away fans in the Premier League– but as its average attendance is around a thousand it could afford to give us the space, and our ticket sales will give its income a massive boost.
Dad makes every one of our players jump out of their skin when he toots the horn at them and beckons them back onto the bus. ‘It looks like we’re about to get on the move again,’ he explains. ‘Things are starting to shift up ahead.’
Sure enough, people are returning to their cars, restarting their engines and the slow crawl towards Windham begins. In the end we arrive only thirty-one minutes after the scheduled start time, but that does mean our players have little time to warm up. And what that means is they don’t have their heads in the game for at least the next thirty minutes, conceding a humiliating three goals and barely getting the ball out of their half before half-time.
I know being cooped up in the coach for so long is partly to blame, but it’s hard at this point not to wonder if we haven’t made mistakes with some of our decisions– in our player selection, perhaps in letting Cassie coach the team, in thinking we could pull this off in such a short time period. It’s hard to fathom why exactly it isn’t working. I don’t think the Windham players are any better than we are. Our lads have worked so hard since our crazy idea came to fruition. They seem motivated. There have, thankfully, been no injuries. And yet here we are again, several goals down to the opposition.
I know Helen will still find some positives to report when she writes it up for theHerald, about the number of fans, the atmosphere and the unwavering team spirit, and I’m eternally grateful to have her in our corner. But I don’t imagine the social media posts will be so kind. Although our fans have been blessedly non-judgemental so far, I’m not sure how long that will last if we keep getting walked all over like this.
Cassie works doubly hard to fire the players back up with a rousing team chat at half-time. I wonder if, despite her initial reservations, she’s actually missing Ben at this moment. I notice Elliot is looking particularly gloomy and make a note to get Cassie to have a private word with him after the match. I don’t want him to feel like this is his fault. And I want to know about it if anyone else on the team suggests it is.
If anything it’s Bailey whose performance is lacking. He’s giving the ball away far too often, which is not like him. Maybe Ben’s absence is having an effect on him too. It certainly looks like his mind is elsewhere this afternoon.
Our players don’t fare any better in the second half and the score finishes at five–nil, our worst loss yet, leaving us all very conscious that we’re going backwards. I’m surprised and very grateful when the fans still give the team a standing ovation. It doesn’t lift them enough to put anyone in the mood for another late-night party at The Fox afterwards, but we still head over there to show our faces.
Having managed not to worry about it since I first boarded the coach, thoughts of Ben and Georgina start creeping back into my mind while I’m sipping my beer. Are they enjoying their meal together? Has she already started falling for him? Will he admit his heart isn’t in it? I turn my phone off and bury it in my bag, to stop myself from continuously checking it.
I don’t even turn it back on when I eventually crawl under my duvet– if Ben hasn’t been in touch yet it will only distress me. Better to get a good night’s sleep and try to forget about it for now. After Crawford’s defeat, I don’t want to feel any more deflated than I do already.
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