When I got out into the gym, everything looked different. A new pitch had been marked out in the middle and there were a titchy pair of goals at either end. I knew it must be a five-a-side pitch so I went to investigate.
“It’s Laura McKenzie isn’t it?” a voice suddenly boomed behind me. I spun round so quickly I went all dizzy. The voice belonged to Mr Pownall. He must have come into the gym when I wasn’t looking.
“Th… that’s right!” I stuttered.
“I wondered if you’d be coming along to my five-a-side practices, Laura,” Mr Pownall continued. “I’ve heard how much you like football. It’s good to see you!”
I smiled at him, but there was something that I just had to put right. I was going to feel really stupid in front of the boys if he went around calling me Laura all the time.
“Actually, I hate being called Laura,” I told him. “My friends all call me Kenny.”
“Right, Kenny it is,” smiled Mr Pownall. “Ah, here come the rest of our happy band. For a moment then I thought we might have to devise a new game: one-a-side football!”
There was a great clatter as the doors from the boys’ changing room burst open and Ryan Scott and Danny McCloud stalked across the gym. They were pretending to be Gladiators. Pathetic! They were followed by a group of younger boys who were all looking at Ryan Scott as though he was Alan Shearer or something. I mean, come on! The boy looks more like Chuckie from Rugrats!
As soon as Ryan Scott saw me he asked angrily, “What’s she doing here?”
“I’ve come to show you a thing or two about football!” I snapped back.
“Yeah, right!” sneered Scotty-chops. “Don’t you think we should see if she knows how to kick the ball, sir? She’s only going to slow us down if she can’t, and that wouldn’t be fair!”
(You see – Ryan Scott and Fliss do have a lot in common! Fliss is always going on about things being ‘fair’.)
Before Mr Pownall could answer, Danny McCloud had tossed a football towards me.
“I’ll show them!” I told myself, and started heading the ball, keeping it up in the air as long as I could. Then I took it on my knee and bounced it from one knee to the other without letting it touch the ground. Then – and this is the clever bit – I trapped the ball on my foot and flicked it on to my knee and kept doing that until Ryan Scott got so mad that he snatched the ball away from me. The others kids broke into applause, and old Scotty looked so mad I thought he might explode.
“That’s easy to do!” he snapped. “I bet you can’t pass it properly though, can you?”
I was just about to prove that my passing skills were as deadly as David Beckham’s, when Mr Pownall grabbed the football.
“That was very impressive Kenny,” he said. “But I’m afraid heading skills won’t be of any use to you in five-a-side football.”
We all looked blankly at him.
“You see this really is a game of FOOTball. If anyone kicks the ball over head height, it automatically means that a free kick is awarded to the other team.”
I must admit that I’d always thought that five-a-side football was exactly the same as the eleven-a-side variety, but with fewer people on the team obviously. WRONG! Mr Pownall explained that it’s a different game entirely.
“When the ball goes over the touchline, a player from the other team doesn’t THROW it in, they have to ROLL it in,” he explained. “And corners are rolled in too.”
“But you do score the same, don’t you sir?” asked Danny McCloud, who was beginning to look a bit confused.
“Well, yes and no,” replied Mr Pownall. “The object of the game is still to get the ball in the back of the net, but you can only score from outside the area. There are no delicate tap-ins with five-a-side!”
We’d been standing around quite a bit, and I think Mr Pownall sensed that we were eager to get on and play.
“Right we’ll discuss the rules of the game as we go along. Let’s get warmed up first!” he said.
We jogged round, and when we were warm enough we stretched out. Then Mr Pownall divided us into groups. He lined up some cones, and first we had to run through them and back to our team, then we had to dribble a ball through them. Ryan Scott was in my team, worse luck, so he never stopped trying to wind me up.
“You think you’re so clever, don’t you?” he muttered when I was waiting for my turn. “Beginners’ luck! Just wait until we play a proper game – then you’ll see how it’s really done!”
“Yeah right!” I hissed back. “Like I’ll be impressed by you! I’ve seen you playing football in the playground, don’t forget. I’ve seen better skills from my mate’s dog!”
Ryan Scott was not a happy boy! I think Mr Pownall sensed that we weren’t exactly the best of friends, so he made us all swap teams for the next exercises and made sure that Ryan and I were on different ones. Actually, that was cool because it meant that we were racing against each other. We did this thing where you had to dribble the ball around various obstacles, then shoot at goal. I’m so used to doing that kind of thing in the garden that it was a piece of cake and I scored every time. Old Scotty kept getting freaked when he saw me and shot his ball over the goal every time. It caught Mr Pownall right in the face once which was kind of funny, although we didn’t know whether we should laugh or not.
Danny McCloud was on my team, and you could tell that he was kind of impressed by the way I could play football. Although of course he’s a boy, so he found it really hard to admit it. It was only when our team came first in all the exercises that he got a bit carried away and said: “Hey McKenzie you’re quite good!” before adding, “… for a girl!”
The time just whizzed past. I couldn’t believe it when Mr Pownall said that the hour was almost up. We just had ten minutes left, and he said that we could have a go at playing a proper five-a-side game, just to get the feel of it. There were nine of us at the practice so he said that he’d make up the numbers.
“Right Kenny and Ryan, you can pick the teams. You first, Kenny”
I love picking teams. I looked at the faces in front of me, all looking eager – and desperate not to be the one left until the end. But you’ll never guess who was looking most eager of all and jumping around going:
“Kenny, pick me, pick me!”
Danny McCloud, that’s who! I mean, that’s not cool from someone of his age, now is it? But still, I felt kind of chuffed. I mean, he wanted to come on my team rather than on his best mate Ryan’s! I would have picked him anyway just to wind old Scotty-chops up. But he actually wanted to be on my team. Boy, did Ryan look MAD!
After we’d picked the teams we didn’t have time for much of a game. But I did have time to do this blinding run, skipping over a tackle from Scotty before passing the ball to Danny who shot it into the back of the net. Usually in that situation I’d go ballistic and do some crazy celebration. But this time was different. I mean, did I really want to fling my arms around Danny McCloud in order to celebrate the goal? I think not! That’s when it hit me that this school five-a-side thing with only boys for company might have a few drawbacks. I really had to get my mates interested. But that was going to be easier said than done – as I was about to find out!
After that first five-a-side football practice, everything suddenly got