The Bare Bum Gang and the Football Face-Off by Anthony McGowan Read Free Book Online Page B

kids probably counted as entertainment to her.
    Anyway, having a big crowd there to watch piled even more pressure on me. I’d never played in front of a crowd before. None of us had.
    Jennifer was standing there with some of her friends. She was wearing a pink tracksuit, which was pretty bad,but I suppose it was the only one she owned.

    The Dockery team were kicking the ball around. Just as I suspected, there were six of them. There was Dockery, Stanton, Furbank, Larkin (dribbling and drooling at the same time), and the two others whose names I could never remember. They all had proper kit. They even hadshin pads. That seemed a bit strange to me –
we
were going to get kicked, but
they
had the shin pads! I suppose there’s always a chance that when you try to kick someone, you might get it a bit wrong and hit them with your shin instead, so they were probably guarding against that. I imagined their mums sending them off to play, saying, ‘Do be careful, dear, when you kick those little children. Make sure you don’t hurt yourselves.’ They were laughing a lot (the Dockery Gang, I mean, not their mums), and generally looking smug.
    Carl was standing by himself near the halfway line, wearing a white T-shirt. But there was something odd about it. It was too chunky and wrinkled. He looked smug as well, or rather like someone trying not to look smug, but failing. I think they were waiting till the last minute to take maximum advantage of the trick, trying to make us look as stupid as possible.
    Well, this time the trick was going to be turned back on them.
    I marched straight up to Carl. He started to say something, but I spoke over him in a loud voice so that everyone could hear – the rest of the Dockery Gang plus all the kids watching.
    â€˜You’re sacked,’ I said.
    â€˜B-b-but . . .’
    â€˜I’m sorry, but we’ve decided you’re not good enough to play in our team. In fact you’re completely rubbish. And your hair looks stupid. We’ve got someone good to play instead of you.’
    â€˜You can’t sack me, because I’m . . . I mean, I was . . . I mean . . .’
    But I’d already turned my back on him and gone to rejoin my team. We all looked towards the sideline, knowing that the eyes of the Dockery Gang as well as the crowd would follow us. Then I waved to Jennifer, who, grinning from ear to ear, took off her track suit and ran out to join us.
    Underneath the horrible pink tracksuit she was wearing a proper white football kit that used to belong to Phillip, and she looked really good. I’d warned her against doing any cartwheels, but I think she probably knew that already. She ran so fast her feet hardly seemed to touch the ground.
    I looked at the opposition. They didn’t know what to think about Jennifer. You could see from their faces that they wanted to laugh, but there was also something a bit like fear in their eyes. They could see that Jennifer was fast and sporty, and I reckon they were imagining what everyone would say if they got beat by a team with a girl in it.
    Then Dockery stepped forward. ‘No girls allowed!’ he shouted.
    â€˜Says who?’ I shouted back. ‘We never said anything about girls playing or not playing, so that means they can. If you’re afraid to play us, then fine. We win.’
    There was a sort of murmur from the crowd then. I think they saw that we were being fair and Dockery wasn’t.
    Dockery clamped his mouth shut after that. Carl was still hovering about, unsure what to do or where to go. ‘Come on then,’ Dockery shouted at him. ‘Sort your kit out.’
    Then Carl took off his white shirt and underneath it he was wearing a blue one.
    The crowd laughed at that, and someone shouted out, ‘Cheats’, but when Dockery went over towards them, most of the kids went quiet. They were still scared of him. And so was I.

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