Sleepover Club Goes For Goal! (8 page)

“Thanks Kenny, your advice seemed to do the trick.” Mr Pownall came up to me when
their match was over. “Maybe you’d like to be my co-manager for the rest of the competition?”

I thought he was being sarcastic at first, but he was dead serious.

“I guess I could,” I told him. “It’ll get me out of being a cheerleader, anyway!”

As soon as we found out who our boys would be facing in the next round, Mr Pownall and I worked out our tactics. Ryan Scott wasn’t too happy about me being involved, but when he saw that I knew what I was talking about he accepted it. Especially when they made it through to the final. The cheerleading went down a storm too. The guys in the team acted like they were big Premier League superstars and lapped up all the attention. And the atmosphere for the final was just
electric
as the crowd joined in with the chants too!

“The team you’re up against has got a big gorilla at the back,” I warned the boys in the team talk before they went on the pitch. “You’ll have to watch him and try to dummy-pass
around him because he’ll flatten you if you get too close.”

“Right boss!” they all nodded, like I was some hot-shot manager or something. It was cool. I mean I’d rather have been playing, but this was the next best thing.

By half-time the score was 1–1 and the boys looked to be on top of things. They scored again just after half-time, but the other team equalised straight away.

“Watch the gorilla!” I kept yelling. “Watch the gorilla!”

With about thirty seconds to go, it looked as though there was going to be extra time, but the gorilla bundled into Ryan Scott. Ryan took the free kick and their goalkeeper came out of his area to collect the ball.

“Penalty!”

We were all going wild.

“Let Danny take it!” I yelled.

Ryan stepped up with the ball.

“Let Danny take it!” I yelled again.

Ryan took the kick, missed, the goalkeeper collected the ball, rolled it out to the gorilla
who lumbered up the pitch and …

“Oh no, he’s scored!”

Screee
! The whistle went for full time. The guys had lost and I felt gutted for the second time that day. I couldn’t believe it.

“I told Scotty to let Danny take the penalty,” I moaned to the others afterwards. “It’s all his fault.”

“Oh come on now, that’s not fair,” said Frankie.

“I bet Ryan’s feeling awful now,” Lyndz agreed. “I feel really sorry for him.”

The only person I was feeling sorry for was myself. I’d been cheated out of playing in the competition, and I felt as though I’d been cheated out of being the winning manager too.

Fortunately, I’d got over it a bit by Monday morning when we got to school. I even managed to mumble “Bad luck, you played really well” to the guys in the team. But I just couldn’t face playing football. In fact I couldn’t face playing football for the rest of the week, and there was no way on earth that I was going
to turn up to the five-a-side practice on Wednesday. What would be the point?

“I think you might be taking this too seriously,” Frankie suggested. “Why can’t you still play football for fun, like you used to?”

“It’s not the same,” I tried to explain. “I just feel cheated that we never got the chance to prove how good we are.”

“How good
you
are, you mean!” laughed Lyndz. “I don’t think the rest of us would have been much good in a competition.”

“We’ll never know, will we?” I told her sadly. “Anyway, are you going to the practice?”

“We can’t without you, can we?” Rosie pointed out. “We wouldn’t have a team.”

I knew that they were trying to make me feel guilty, but my mind was made up – I wasn’t going. Fliss looked quite relieved anyway.

Well, on the Thursday, I was just minding my own business in the playground before school when a football rolled on to my foot. I looked around, but I couldn’t see where it might have come from. The others hadn’t arrived yet so it
couldn’t be them. I could see Ryan and Danny kicking a ball about over on the field, but they were too far away.

“Come on then Kenny, pass it back!” It was Mr Pownall. “It’s not like you not to kick the ball back.”

“I’m sorry sir, I couldn’t work out where it had come from,” I explained.

Mr Pownall walked over to me.

“You weren’t at five-a-side practice yesterday,” he said. “Don’t tell me you’ve given up on it?”

“There didn’t seem much point in coming, after the fiasco at the competition,” I sighed. “If we’re never going to get a game, what’s the point in playing?”

“And is that what your friends think?” he asked.

“Dunno,” I shrugged. “I think they were only entering the competition for my benefit, because they knew how much I wanted to play.”

“Very noble!” laughed Mr Pownall. “But they enjoyed playing too, didn’t they? They
were getting quite good.”

“Yes, they were,” I admitted.

“So they’d be quite happy to play in a competition if I organised one with a girls’ team then?” he asked.

“Yes, but you’re never going to find one, are you?”

“Well Miss McKenzie, that’s where you’re wrong!” Mr Pownall beamed. “You know I told you that my friend should have been taking a team from Hollymount School to the competition? Well, their minibus broke down on the way there, and one of the girls was sick so they never made it. Now his girls are hungry for a competition too. So we’ve arranged one for you all here – next Wednesday. What do you say? Are you up for it?”

I couldn’t say anything. For once I was speechless. All I could do was grin like an idiot. In fact I was still opening and closing my mouth like a goldfish when the others appeared.

“What’s up with you?” asked Frankie, prodding me in the ribs.

“Are you ill?” Rosie felt my head.

“Stop doing that, Kenny!” commanded Fliss. “You’re freaking me out!”

It was just hysterical, them fussing over me like that. I cracked up laughing.

“I think she’s really lost it this time,” Lyndz whispered behind her hand.

That made me laugh even more. I started leaping around and punching the air.

“It’s OK, it’s OK!” I yelled. “We’ve got ourselves a competition!”

The others all looked at each other then back at me.

“Game on
!”

Well, you can imagine how totally hyper we were about the competition. This was going to be our chance to prove ourselves. But after we’d played football together that lunchtime, I started to have my doubts about the whole thing. I mean, it had been less than a week since we’d last played together, but the others seemed to have forgotten absolutely everything that Mr Pownall had taught them. And what made it worse was that they just laughed about it.

“Whoops, butterfingers!” Fliss giggled as she scooped the ball out of the net for about the tenth time.

“Concentrate for goodness sake!” I yelled. “This competition is serious, you know.”

“Lighten up, Kenny!” Frankie rugby-tackled me to the ground. The others all piled on top of us and started tickling me.

“Get off!” I gasped, struggling to get up. “It’s not funny, we’ve got to practise for the match.”

“You’re a right misery guts, do you know that?” Rosie grumbled, scrambling up from the ground.

“Look, I’m sorry,” I said. “But I thought you wanted to win this match as much as I do. This might be our only chance to play, and wouldn’t it be great to go out in a blaze of glory?”

“Well, yes,” admitted Lyndz, “but I don’t suppose there’ll be anyone watching us anyway. It’s not a big competition like last Saturday, is it?”

“But we don’t need supporters to play well, do we?” I fired back. “You’re just being defeatist. Come on guys, do it for me?”

The others all looked at each other.

“OK, but we’re only doing it this once,”
Frankie spoke for all of them.

“And if anyone laughs at me…” piped up Fliss.

“… you’re out of there,” the rest of us said together. “Yes, we know!”

The problem was that to practise properly we really needed some opposition. We tried practising by ourselves over the weekend, but it got pretty hopeless. I mean, when you’re trying to be the striker
and
the goalkeeper you can get a bit of an identity crisis!

“This is never going to work!” wailed Fliss. “We’re going to be a laughing stock. We’ll have to call the whole thing off!”

“No way!” I told her. “We’ll just have to sort something out!”

And that’s where the boys came in. (I always knew that they must be useful for something!) It nearly made me choke to ask them a favour on Monday morning, but it had to be done.

“But boys aren’t supposed to play against girls,” sneered Ryan Scott when I finally asked him to play against us. “You might get too upset when you never get the ball.”

“Yeah, right!” I snorted. “I reckon you’re scared that we’re going to beat the pants off you. Not up to the challenge then, Scotty Boy?”

“OK, you’re on!” he said indignantly, “but you’d better not start snivelling when we keep beating you!”

As if!

I knew that Fliss would have a fit when I told her what I’d arranged, so I didn’t tell her until the last minute. Bad move! She nearly wet herself when she saw Ryan Scott all puffed up waiting for the contest.

“I… I can’t play against them!” she wailed.

“’Course you can,” I told her firmly. “You’ve done it before. Just forget who they are. Pretend they’re girls or something.”

Easier said than done. Fliss just froze every time she saw Ryan Scott with the ball. 1–0, the ball flew into the goal over her head. 2–0, the ball whizzed in past her left hand. 3–0, the ball whooshed in to her right. 4–0, the ball whipped in through her legs.

“Come on Fliss, get a grip!” I yelled. I turned
to Frankie. “This is hopeless!”

“Hang on a minute, I’ve got an idea,” she said.

She quietly went over to have a word with Ryan Scott, and when she’d whispered something else to Fliss she came back.

“Right, I reckon the rest of us should have a bit of shooting practice, what do you say?” she said, and grabbing another football, she went towards the other goal.

“What’s going on?” I asked her when Danny McCloud and the others were shooting at goal.

“Oh, I just told Scotty what a great striker he is.”

I stared at her in disbelief.

“And said that because he’s such a superstar,” she continued, “he’s the only person we can rely on to give Fliss the practice she needs.”

“What?”
I shrieked. “You traitor! What about Girl Power? I’m better than Ryan Scott any day of the week. And you know it!”

“I know,” agreed Frankie. “But would Fliss have listened to you like that?” She gestured to
where Fliss was engrossed in what Ryan Scott was telling her.

“I guess not,” I agreed. “But he’ll be so big-headed now, he’ll be unbearable. I hope it’s worth it!”

Well, I was definitely right about him getting big-headed. He never stopped rubbing it in that we needed his help to sort out our playing. I was well annoyed about that.

“I’m going to kill you for this!” I warned Frankie. “He’s more unbearable than ever.”

“I know!” she agreed. “I made a BIG mistake with that. You’d better shoot me now!”

Of course Fliss was absolutely delirious about Ryan Scott’s attention, which just made us madder still.

“I bet she hasn’t learnt
anything
from him,” Rosie said before our match against the boys the next lunchtime. “She’s probably just been batting her eyelashes at him and telling him how wonderful he is!”

Well, that’s where we were all wrong. Fliss played an absolute blinder in goal. Nothing got past her. And we actually won the game 1–0!

“Hey Fliss, you were brilliant!” we all congratulated her afterwards.

“She had a good coach, didn’t she?” smirked Ryan Scott from behind us. “Good job you’ve got a man like me to sort you out, isn’t it?”

“Man?
!” we snorted. “In your dreams, mate!”

“Don’t get too cocky,” he sneered. “We only let you win because Pownall said we had to boost your confidence.”