T.J. and the Hat-trick (4 page)

‘You can’t just stand by their goal!’ Jamie yelled at Tulsi. ‘How can anyone pass to you all the way over there?’

‘Someone with a bit of talent, maybe,’ said Tulsi. ‘Someone who looked where he was kicking it.’

‘We’re off now,’ said Krissy. ‘Thanks for the game.’

TJ watched them skid out of the gate. ‘It looks like we need quite a lot of training,’ he said to Rob, who was still writing.

‘Hillside do have one of the most successful school teams in the area,’ Rob said, without looking up. The others were busy having an argument. ‘They were runners-up in the league last year. Krissy Barton scored eighteen goals.’

‘How do you know all this stuff?’ TJ asked.

‘The results are all on the Internet,’ Rob said. ‘It’s easy. Only it seemed a bit pointless when we didn’t have a team. But now it could be very useful.’

‘Not if we don’t find some more players,’ TJ said. ‘And not if the ones we’ve got don’t stop fighting.’

When TJ got home he handed the letter to his mum. ‘Training tomorrow night,’ he said. ‘We might be getting a school team.’

‘Cool,’ said Joey. ‘Can we come and watch?’

‘We haven’t got many players yet. It might be rubbish.’

‘I’ll try and make it myself,’ Mr Wilson said. ‘It sounds like you’re going to need some supporters.’

After lunch the next day, Mr Wood asked Tulsi and TJ to come to the classroom.

‘I might need some help,’ he said, holding up a silver key. ‘Mr Burrows has given me the key to the PE store, so we can fetch out some equipment for training tonight, and we can see what we can find to make break
times
more interesting. First problem. Where is it?’

‘Easy,’ said Tulsi. ‘It’s at the end of that corridor there. Next to Mr Coggins’ room.’

They looked down the dimly lit corridor. At the end, a single fluorescent light was flickering. Mr Wood led the way, but as he reached out to put the key in the door a tall figure in a brown coat emerged from the caretaker’s room, making them all jump.

‘What do you want then?’ Mr Coggins demanded.

So far TJ had only glimpsed the caretaker in the distance, sweeping up leaves in the car park. Below his shiny bald head he had an enormous red nose and bulging, red-rimmed eyes.

‘PE equipment,’ Mr Wood said cheerfully, and Mr Coggins gave a hollow laugh that turned into a long, wheezing cough.

‘Just you be careful how you open that
door
,’ he warned them. ‘I’m not responsible if you hurt yourselves, all right?’

Mr Wood turned the key and pushed at the door. ‘There seems to be something in the way,’ he grunted, pushing harder. Behind them, the caretaker laughed again. ‘Come on, you two. Give me a hand.’

They all shoved together and suddenly the door burst open. Broken hoops, flat footballs and leaking beanbags cascaded onto the floor. Mr Wood reached round the corner and flicked a switch. Inside the little room they saw a mountain of old wire baskets and broken equipment.

‘Very dangerous,’ said Mr Coggins. ‘I wouldn’t go in there if I were you.’

‘We’re not going in,’ Mr Wood said. ‘We’re going to take it all out. Tulsi, TJ, go and fetch your friends. We’ll put it all in the corridor and sort it into things we can use and things that Mr Coggins can chuck
in
the skip. OK, Mr Coggins?’

Mr Coggins stared at Mr Wood for a moment. ‘Fill my skip with all this rubbish?’ he said finally. ‘You can’t do that! And I’m not having my corridor filled up neither. We’ll see what the boss has to say about this. Don’t you touch a thing till I get back.’

C
HAPTER
7

‘QUICK,’ SAID TULSI
to the others on the playground. ‘You have to come. There’s going to be an enormous row.’

They rushed back through the school and found Mr Wood, Mr Coggins, Mr Burrows and Mrs Logan all standing in the narrow entrance to the corridor. ‘I need PE equipment,’ Mr Wood was saying. ‘We can’t train without it, and if we don’t train we can’t have a team. Most of this stuff should have been thrown away a long time ago. Look at it!’

‘What’s all this about football training?’
Mr
Burrows asked, looking worried. His suit was old and crumpled, and it looked as if he’d spilt half of his breakfast on his tie. ‘Football’s always causing trouble around here. Broken windows. Neighbours complaining.’

‘Exactly,’ Mrs Logan sniffed. ‘Why only yesterday I had to talk to a boy who—’

‘I thought perhaps if I taught the children some skills then they wouldn’t cause trouble,’ Mr Wood interrupted, to TJ’s relief. ‘And if we gave them something to play with on the playground, maybe break times would be a little calmer.’

Mrs Logan turned suddenly and saw the children waiting. ‘You children, outside please. Right now.’

They walked a few steps and saw their classroom door standing open. Jamie pointed, and they all slipped inside.
They
could still hear the teachers quite clearly.

‘I’m impressed by your enthusiasm, Mr Wood,’ Mr Burrows was saying. ‘I just hope you won’t be too disappointed. You’ll be very lucky if anyone at all comes to your football training. And please, try not to upset the neighbours.’

‘What about my corridor?’ demanded Mr Coggins. ‘What about my skip with all this rubbish?’

‘That’s what your skip is for, Mr Coggins,’ Mrs Logan said. ‘I shall come and watch this football training,’ she told Mr Wood. ‘Just to make sure that everything is done properly.’

As soon the teachers had left, TJ and his friends went quickly out onto the playground, where Mr Wood found them a few minutes later.

‘All sorted,’ he said. ‘Mr Coggins is finding
us
a trolley. Come on, you lot.’

They passed out the things that Mr Wood excavated from the storeroom to Tulsi, who heaped most of them on the trolley as Mr Wood called out ‘Rubbish!’ over and over again. The room was nearly empty when Mr Wood said, ‘At last!’ and held up a blue-and-black striped football shirt for them to see.

‘Inter Milan,’ said Rob. ‘It’s a pity about the holes.’

It was true. All the shirts that Mr Wood pulled out of a big cardboard box were full of holes. ‘Mice, I think,’ he said gloomily.

‘Or rats,’ said Tulsi with a shudder.

‘Still,’ said Rob, ‘there
are
some proper footballs. And some shin pads. And some cones. And even some training bibs.’

‘Hey,’ said Mr Wood, brightening up. ‘Well spotted, Rob. Excellent. We’ll get these footballs pumped up. Grab that box
of
skipping ropes too. And those small balls over there. We’ll give them to the little ones for break times.’

‘It’s still no good,’ Tulsi whispered to TJ as they planted seeds for their science project that afternoon. ‘It’s still only us going to training.’

But Rodrigo surprised them. When the bell went at the end of the afternoon, he pulled out an orange football shirt with a blue collar.

‘Nice!’ said Rob. ‘FC Porto away kit, isn’t it, Rodrigo?’

‘Porto good,’ grinned Rodrigo, as they made their way out onto the playground where Mr Wood was waiting. Quite a few people had gathered to watch, and TJ had the feeling that most of them had come to laugh. He saw that Mrs Logan had brought a chair outside and was sitting with
a
clipboard on her lap.

‘She’s going to give Mr Wood marks out of ten,’ said Rafi.

‘She’ll probably knock a mark off for the hat,’ Tulsi said. Mr Wood was wearing a blue baseball cap, tracksuit bottoms and a faded red T-shirt.

‘OK,’ the teacher said. ‘Let’s make a start. We’ll do three laps of the field and the playground first, to warm up.’

He set off at a gentle jog and TJ was pleased to discover that he was able to keep up easily. Tulsi and Rafi followed a short way behind, but Jamie stopped after the first lap and started walking.

‘Right,’ said Mr Wood when they’d finished. ‘Everyone take a ball.’ Mr Wood, TJ noticed, wasn’t out of breath at all. ‘Now spread out – give yourselves a square around you about two metres each side. Just move the ball around in your square with
the
bottom of your foot. One foot, then the other. That’s it! It’s like a little dance. Keep jogging. Don’t stop.’

TJ could hear Danny complaining that it was boring, but he didn’t care. He was enjoying himself. He got into a rhythm, pushing the ball first one way, then the other. The rest of the world simply didn’t exist.

‘I said stop, TJ!’ Mr Wood’s voice finally got through to him, and he stood still, embarrassed. ‘Nice work, everyone,’ Mr Wood said. ‘Just pay attention and stop when I say “stop”, OK? Now then . . .’

All the exercises Mr Wood gave them to do were dead simple, but after a while TJ realized that he hardly ever let them stop moving. They dribbled in and out of rows of cones, they jumped between hoops, they passed with one foot and then the other, they controlled the ball with thighs and chests and feet . . .

‘When are you going to play a game, then?’ yelled Danny’s mate Carl, who’d come along to jeer. But TJ knew that they were doing some serious work. And he wasn’t the only one who’d figured that out.

There was a sudden clatter of wheels and TJ saw Tommy and his mates skid to a halt on their skateboards.

‘Mr Wood?’ said Tommy. ‘Is it OK if we join in?’

Mr Wood looked at them. ‘Well, I suppose you’re warmed up already,’ he said. ‘And we’re going to have a game now, to finish off. But next time you come from the start, OK?’

Tommy and his mates grinned and parked their boards.

‘These are the rules,’ Mr Wood said. ‘Once you have the ball under control, no one can take it off you. There are no tackles because we’re playing on a hard surface here. I want to see you control the ball, pass and move. Just like the practice we’ve been doing. TJ, Tulsi, Jamie, Tommy and Rafi, put on these blue bibs. I’ll play with Danny, Rodrigo, Cameron and Jay. We’ll be the Greens.’

‘I’ll go in goal,’ TJ said.

‘You don’t have to,’ Tulsi told him.

‘I
want
to be a goalie,’ said TJ. ‘Goalies are
good
. They can save penalties. Everyone loves them.’

‘You’re crazy,’ said Tulsi. ‘But at least it saves us having to argue about it. Now let’s show Mr Wood how absolutely brilliant we are.’