The lure of football had drawn Jared to work with a club as their team doctor, rather than working in a hospital or his parents’ general practice. And he still enjoyed the highs and lows of the game, the camaraderie among the players and hearing the supporters roar their approval when a goal was scored.
At the end of the training session, Archie turned to Bailey. ‘Over to you.’
Jared watched in sheer disbelief as Bailey proceeded to take the youth team through a series of yoga stretches and then breathing exercises.
What place did yoga have on a football pitch? In his experience, the players would do far better working on sport-specific training. As well as ball control, they needed to focus on muscular endurance and lower-body strength, and also work on explosive acceleration and short bursts of speed. If Archie wanted him to do it, Jared could design a training programme easily enough—either a warm-up routine that would work for the whole team, or some player-specific programmes to help deal with each player’s weak spots—and it would do a lot more for the players’ overall neuromuscular co-ordination than yoga would.
But having a go at Bailey Randall in front of the team wouldn’t be professional, so Jared kept his mouth shut until the lads had gone for a shower and she was doing things on her laptop. Then he walked over to her and said, ‘Can we have a quick word?’
She looked up from her laptop with an expression of surprise, but nodded. ‘Sure.’
‘What exactly does your box of tricks tell us?’ he asked.
‘It analyses each player’s performance. For each player, I can show you a graph of his average performance over the last ten matches or training sessions, and how today’s performance compares against that average.’
So far, so good. ‘Which tells us what?’
‘The system will pick up if a player is underperforming,’ she said. ‘Maybe he’s coming down with a cold but isn’t showing any symptoms yet—and if he’s sick he’s more at risk of sustaining injury and shouldn’t be playing.’
He gave her a sceptical look. ‘So you’re telling me you can predict if a player’s going to get a cough or a cold?’
‘No, but I can predict the likelihood of the player sustaining an injury in his next match, based on his performance today and measured against an average of his last ten sessions.’
‘Right.’ Jared still wasn’t totally convinced. And then he tackled the subject that bothered him most about today’s antics. ‘And the yoga?’
‘As a football team doctor—someone who’s clearly specialised in sports medicine—you’d already know that dynamic stretches are more useful than static stretches.’ She held his gaze. ‘But if you want me to spell it out to prove that I know what I’m talking about, dynamic stretches means continuous movement. That promotes blood flow, strength and stability. It also means you can work on more than one muscle group at a time—so it’s more functional, because it mimics what happens with everyday movements. And you only hold the stretch for a short period of time, so the muscle releases more effectively and you get a better range of movement with each repetition.’ She raised her eyebrows, as if challenging him to call her on it. ‘Happy?’
He nodded. She did at least know her stuff, then. Even if she was a bit misguided about the computer programme. ‘So you’re a qualified yoga teacher?’
‘No. But a qualified teacher—the one who’s taught me for the last five years—helped me put the routine together.’
‘Right. And the breathing?’
She put her hands on her hips and gave him a hard stare. ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake! Are you going to quiz me on every aspect of this? Look, the project’s already been approved by Mr Fincham.’ The chairman of the club’s board of directors. ‘If you have a problem with it, then maybe you need to speak to him about it.’
‘I just don’t see what use yoga is going to be to a bunch of lads who need sport-specific training,’ he said.
‘“Lads” being the operative word,’ she said. ‘They’re sixteen, seventeen—technically they’re not quite adults, and most of their peers are either still in education or starting some kind of apprenticeship. I won’t insult them by calling them children, because they’re not, but they still have quite a lot of growing up to do. And, in the profession they’ve chosen, they’re all very much in the public eye. The media hounds are just waiting to tear into the behaviour of overpaid footballers, whipping up a frenzy among their readers about how badly the boys behave.’
‘That’s true,’ he said, ‘but I still don’t get what it has to do with yoga.’
‘Discipline,’ she said crisply.
‘They already have the discipline of turning up for training and doing what Archie tells them to do.’
‘Holding the yoga poses also takes discipline, and so does the breathing. So it’s good practice and it helps to underline what Archie does with them. Plus it’s good for helping to deal with stress,’ she said.
That was the bit Jared really didn’t buy into.
She clearly saw the scepticism in his expression, because she sighed. ‘Look, if they get hassled by photographers or journalists or even just someone else in a club when they’re out—someone who wants to prove himself as a big hero who can challenge a footballer and beat him up—then all they have to do is remember to breathe and it’ll help them to take everything down a notch.’
‘Hmm,’ he said, still not convinced.
She threw her hands up in apparent disgust. ‘You know what? You can think what you like, Dr Fraser. It’s not going to make any difference to my research. If you’ve got some good ideas for how the data can be used, or about different measurements that would be useful in analysing the team’s performance, then I’d be very happy to listen. But if all you’re going to do is moan and bitch, then please just go and find someone else to annoy, because I’m busy. Excuse me.’
Bailey Randall clearly didn’t like it when someone actually questioned her. And she still hadn’t convinced him of the benefits of her project. ‘Of course you are,’ he said, knowing how nasty it sounded but right at that moment not caring.
As he walked away, he was sure he heard her mutter, ‘What an ass.’
She was entitled to her opinion. He wasn’t very impressed by her, either. But they’d just have to make the best of it, for as long as it took for Archie and the team director to realise that her ‘research’ was all a load of hokum.
‘HE’S IMPOSSIBLE. TALK about blinkered. And narrow-minded. And—and—Arrgh!’ Bailey stabbed her fork into her cake in utter frustration.
To her dismay, Joni just laughed.
‘You’re my best friend,’ Bailey reminded her. ‘You’re supposed to be supportive.’
‘I am. Of course I am,’ Joni soothed. ‘But you’re the queen of endorphins. You always see the best in people, and to see you having a hissy fit about someone—well, he’s obviously made quite an impression on you.’
‘And not a good one.’ Bailey ate a forkful of cake and then rolled her eyes at the plate. ‘Oh, come on. If I’m going to eat this stuff, it could at least reward me with a sugar rush.’
‘Maybe it just makes you grumpy.’
Bailey narrowed