Free Missing! by Bali Rai

Thursday
    â€˜ FOOTBALL IS ALL about passion,’ one of our coaches, Mr Turner, said to us. ‘Passion, pride and playing for each other . . .’
    We were sitting in our local youth club, going over why we’d lost two games out of two in the junior league and I was worried. My team, the Rushton Reds, was different from the others. We had girls playing for us.
Girls.
    â€˜Are you listening to me, Jason?’ Mr Turner asked me.
    I nodded and shrugged at the same time. My mates were there with me: Dal, Chris and Abs, as well as the rest of the lads.
And
the girls . . .
    â€˜I think we need to practise defending,’ said one of the girls, Lily. She’s OK, but she’s got a big mouth and she never stops talking.
    â€˜Thanks for that,’ said our second coach, Mr James.
    â€˜Yes – we’ll definitely do that,’ said the third coach, an American lady called Miss Rice.
    â€˜And I think shooting too,’ added Lily. ‘I mean, how are we supposed to win if we don’t score goals?’
    â€˜Yes, Lily,’ replied Mr Turner, with a smile.
    I turned to Abs and sighed.
    â€˜Stupid girl,’ he whispered as Miss Rice stood up from her chair.
    â€˜Soccer is about team play,’ she said. ‘Andwe just aren’t playing as a team, y’all,’ Miss Rice added.
    â€˜
Football,
miss!’ said Chris.
    â€˜Potayto, potarto,’
replied Miss Rice in a silly voice. ‘You may call it football, but to the rest of the world it’s soccer . . . got it?’
    Chris nodded.
    â€˜We’re gonna get stuffed in every game,’ whispered Dal.
    This time I shrugged. We didn’t
have
to lose the next game. It wasn’t certain. We just had to play better. But how were we going to do that with girls in the team?
    Me and my friends – Dal, Abs and Chris – had joined the Rushton Reds, a new team, at the beginning of the season. Abs and Chris are wicked strikers, whilst Dal plays in defence. I’m a midfielder. We’d been so excited at making the squad and then playing in the starting eleven. But that hadchanged. And quickly too. Because of a freak wave of injuries to some of the other lads, we’d ended up having to play with girls in the team. And to make it worse, one of our coaches, Miss Rice, had told one of her friends about it. A friend who worked for the local TV station.
    â€˜It’ll make great TV,’ she’d explained to the team. ‘They’re going to come and watch a training session and maybe even a game. If they like what they see, they may make a film about you. You might all get to be interviewed too!’
    â€˜Will it be on proper telly, miss?’ Dal had asked.
    â€˜If they go ahead and make the film,’ Miss Rice had replied.
    â€˜Will we get money for it?’ asked Abs. ‘Like proper players?’
    â€˜Don’t be silly, Abs,’ Lily had told him.
    â€˜What’s more sillier than girls playingfootball?’ he’d asked.
    â€˜You playing football,’ one of the other girls, Parvy, had added.
    â€˜Or using odd phrases like “more sillier”,’ Lily had continued.
    And now here we were – talking about how rubbish we’d been so far – and how we might end up on the telly. Great! If that went ahead, everyone I knew would find out. The Rushton Reds were going to be one big joke. Not only were we losing games, but we had girls playing too!
    â€˜We need to stop missing our chances,’ Mr Turner said, getting back to the football.
    Everyone nodded. Except for me and another player called Steven. We didn’t nod because we’d both missed chances already. From the penalty spot! In the same game too – our second of the season! Which we had lost, just like we’d lost our first match.
    â€˜I’ll take the penalties next time!’ shouted Abs. ‘I would have
buried
the two