Football Fiction

  “We’ve got a while before the next race. Do you fancy a drink?”

  “Not half,” answered Bullion.

  “Maybe that girl will still be up there…”

  “Let’s hope so… and getting slowly plastered,” added Bullion.

  “I could have a nice glass of champagne about now.”

  “Me too,” answered Bullion. “That last race has wet my whistle. I’m going back to work my charm on that pretty little thing that you bought the magnum for. I know she wants me. They all do, you know,” coifed Bullion.

  “Yes Boss. No woman in her right mind could refuse you.”

  Bullion nodded as though not a truer word had been spoken.

  “Why don’t you have a pie and a port with me, Ingot? It’s the only sane way to go when you’re gambling. I don’t know how many times I’ve said it, but you can’t gamble on an empty stomach. Nobody can.”

  Ingot nodded in agreement but had no intention of ever having a pie and a port. He drank champagne and wasn’t changing for anyone, even his Boss.

  The clubhouse had filled up, and space was limited. The bar was three deep, and there were no tables available. Bullion looked around for the young girl, but she was nowhere in sight, and the table they were at before was now occupied by a group of young toffs.

  Ingot sensed Bullion was in confrontational mode again and slipped away to grab the waitress.

  “Here. What’s your name?” he asked.

  “Katie.”

  “Can you make sure the next table is ours?”

  “Of course,” she smiled, taking a fifty-pound note from him.

  Bullion puffed his chest out towards the toffs and practiced combination punches as Ingot cringed.

  “There’s no need for that Boss, it’s alright. I’ve sorted another table. The waitress is just cleaning it for us,” said Ingot, returning.

  Bullion was having a good butcher’s at the toffs, trying to make visual contact. He postured towards them and baited them. Ingot looked on in amazement as they were having too much fun amongst themselves to notice the four-foot-seven-inch man in a crowded room.

  “They’re deliberately ignoring me,” Bullion said angrily to his chauffeur.

  Ingot was not sure how his Boss had come to that conclusion, but he didn’t want the situation to escalate either.

  “Well, would you believe the waitress is calling us over?”

  “Where?” asked Bullion.

  “Over there.”

  “No she’s not. She’s serving some drinks to that table,” said Bullion.

  “Katie,” shouted Ingot.

  The waitress looked up and smiled and made a two minutes hand signal. Ingot nodded and smiled back.

  “See, Boss.”

  Bullion went back to leering at the toffs.

  “Would you follow me?” said Katie, leading them outside to the balcony.

  “Perfect,” said Ingot pleased.

  “How good is that, Boss?” he asked.

  Bullion gave a grunt. “It would have been better right next to our old table.” He smiled.

  The drinks arrived. “Another result,” said Ingot, giving a tip to the provider.

  Bullion took a drink and raised his body up to look at the toffs again.

  “Keep them coming,” said Ingot to the waitress.

  “Cheers,” he said, toasting his glass of champagne to Bullion.

  “I thought you were going to order a port this time,” said Bullion.

  Ingot held his glass up again. “Here’s to smart women that know us. I think she must have thought we wanted the same again. Oh well, better not to mix cocktails. You know what happens when we do that.”

  Bullion laughed and settled a little bit better for the conversation. The last time Ingot did that was at Bullion’s surprise forty-fourth birthday party that he had organized. They had gotten wasted together, and Ingot ended up convincing Bullion to buy the club.

  “Do you remember that night?” asked Ingot, laughing.

  “Remember? I live it every day,” said Bullion.

  “Yes, and you never let me forget it, do you?”

  Bullion smiled. “Yes, we reeked of ale that night.”

  “Well Boss, I don’t care what you say. I don’t think you’ve done too badly from my recommendations over the years, even if I say so myself.”

  “I’m teasing, Ingot. Bitominge City has been great. It’s just past its sell-by date, and that’s all Gold’s fault, nobody else’s, for not checking out the kitchen properly. If we’d have done due diligence and not tried to nickel and dime, we wouldn’t be in limbo right now waiting on only Gold knows what.”

  “Well, I’m sure it will resolve itself soon” said Ingot.

  “You know what our problem was don’t you?”

  “What?” asked Ingot?

  “We thought it was a shoo-in. I think he’ll come up with the money eventually, we just don’t know when. Let’s face it, if he came this far, I can’t see him quitting now and leaving his deposit can you?”

  “No, Boss,” said Ingot in agreement.

  “Besides, rational and common sense would have to have been a complete after-thought if he signed the deal and didn’t have the money to pay for it. I can’t see him being that daft,” said Bullion. “Or maybe I can. I don’t care. I know one thing: I won’t wait forever.”

  “No, Boss,” answered Ingot.

  “Right. Let’s have a look at this bladder,” Bullion said, picking up the race card.

  He studied it and sipped at the same time. “Ingot, I haven’t got a scooby with this next race.”

  “No, me neither, Boss.”

  “If it wasn’t so early into the card, I’d say get your tit for and let’s hit the frog and toad,” said Bullion, downing his drink.

  “Where’s my pie anyway?” he continued.

  Ingot looked around and was happy to see the waitress coming towards them with his food.

  “What are you going to John Major?” Bullion asked.

  “I don’t rightly know. I can’t make head nor tail of it.”

  “That makes a change for you, Mr. Moneypot.”

  “I don’t know, Boss, and I’ve been lucky so far.”

  “I’ll say. Well, it’s no good being at the airs and graces if we don’t bet, so how about we keep it nice and lemon squeezy and take a nice little Tina Turner on the favorite?” said Bullion.

  Ingot nodded. “Easier said than done Boss. There’re two favorites in this next race.”

  “Oh right, who are they?”

  “Backbone Bob and Slip Sliding Away are evens, Boss.”

  “Major Stevens, eh?”

  Bullion belched as he took a bite of his hot pie. “I better slow down on the Basil Fawlty’s or I’ll be Wallace and Gromiting all over the place.”

  “Is it a bad one Boss?”

  “No Ingot, just hot, very hot.”

  Ingot noticed his Boss always started talking in rhyming slang when he was nervous or inebriated. He couldn’t work out which one it was at the moment.

  “I’m going to play a tenner exacta boxed on One For The Pot and Hors D’houvres,” said Ingot.

  “A Pavarotti, eh? Right. I’ll match you with a Welsh Opera and Dynamo Dave boxed.”

  “How much?” asked Ingot?

  “Fifty pence.”

  “Very good, Boss. I’ll go place the bets.”

  “And don’t be messing about waiting in line with the rest of the Hillman Hunters. Use the end window for club members. Here,” Bullion said, giving him his member’s pass.

  Ingot nodded, walking down the stairs wondering if he was going to get lucky again. One For The Pot was even, but Hors D’houvres was a 20/1 outsider. Surely he couldn’t win again.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  AWST PRE-SEASON

  It was a glorious, baking hot Saturday afternoon in August that welcomed The Kings Road Knock Offs for a pre-season friendly. The lines to get in were hundreds of yards long, and this was promised
as the season of hope and change for the fans.

  Phulham was the team that spent in last season’s winter transfer window and replaced their manager with an older, wiser head. Until that point, they were going down. Woy Onyourheadson was named manager just before the New Year. He went about his business with alarming alacrity and signed seven players in the window and luckily for him, had two influential players come back from injury.

  It was the start of the great escape. His tenure began by badly losing to near rival Chelski 2-1. This result was expected, but his team made amends and nicked their first point under his guidance away to the Trotters at the Pig’s Head stadium.

  Five days later they beat the scum courtesy of a John Hurt trademark free kick. Although he had instilled toughness in his defence, things weren’t quite right, and he had to wait until the middle of March before his team recorded their second victory.

  It was at this point that Onyourheadson felt he had turned the corner for hope and survival. How little brilliant men know about the cruel game of football. After a stuffing by The Ebony Moggies and an emotional post-match press conference, the supporters began to pick at his team selection and lack of consistency. However, he proved his experience by winning four out of the last five games.

  During this incredible run, Bitominge City were visitors and for the first time in months, a 2-0 win lifted them out of the relegation zone and left their destiny in their own hands.

  He saw his team survive against all odds and break several club records and with this became part of the Kings Road folklore.

  That was last season and now a division apart and a stuck turnstile or two. Less than ten thousand fans turned up for the home friendly and the start of the new season, and for reasons only known by the ticket office, less than half of the fans made it in before the kick off. Hundreds went back to the pubs where they had come from, disillusioned but happy. “Why waste a good afternoon drinking with football?” they would gladly argue later. Some went in at the away end—no queue.

  The team for Bitominge City was Mack Dressmaker, Sweet Stout, R Kelly, Raddish Jedi (May the Force Be With You), Ridgeback, Almost (in Italian), The Celeb, Cheffcokhead, The Shithouse, The Lightbulb and Shagger. The subs were Sir Arthur Conan, Martin Dressmaker, Zizane, Milky Naftea, Enter McDragon, French Fwonk, Inspector Parnaby and How Many Clubs.

  The match ended, as it started, level and pretty much uneventful, as all good friendly matches should. From the away supporter seats in the Whaleway End, they had a great view of the encounter, and if Bitominge City could have managed a draw in last season’s tie they would have stayed up.

  The game was a game of two halves, as the old cliché goes. A robust Phulham side eager to carry on from last year’s remarkable achievement and bury the Blues dominated the first half, and it should have been out of sight if Phulham had matched their creativity with an equally gifted execution.

  But they didn’t, and this allowed Bitominge to come back into the game in the second half and make a fist of it. Finally having woken up from their Saturday afternoon nap, Bitominge took the opportunity on offer and hit a purple patch of trying entertainment as a football concept. Ironically, this raised the crowd’s enthusiasm and its voice as a harmonious; “keep right on” rang out.

  The encouragement did wonders for the home team, and they leveled in the seventy-seventh minute through a neat inter-change between Zizane and The Celeb, with the Swede finishing off the move with a Thor-like thunderous drive past Schwartzer and into the far corner of the net. Woy Onyourheadson tried to take the initiative back with a double change in personnel, but the game fizzled out and ended as it started, all square.

  The boardroom was filled with prawn sarnies and liquid refreshments. If there was something Bullion prided himself on, it was putting on a spread for his guests.

  Moreham Friedegg and his entourage were his visitors today, and their relationship was one of respect and consideration. Both groups knew how hard it was trying to balance the club books and also give the fans some bang for their buck. Phulham had managed to do this better than their rivals and had been part of the premier elite since 2001 and looked the more favorable to progress to the next level and Europe. The Big Nut, as Bullion liked to call it, was the P and L column; sod the winning trophies any mug could do that if you had enough money to throw at a team. The real deal was making money out of what you’ve got, and this was where Bullion was a big winner over his peer Friedegg.

  Phulham had a turn over of 53.7 million pounds but only showed a profit of 3.2 million, while Bullion and his partner Gold had more than twice that profit at 7.8 million on only a turn over of 32.6 million—numbers that Bullion was keen to point out.

  “So how was your P&L for last season?” asked Bullion.

  “Three-point-two in the black, not too shabby. Holding our own as you could say. And you?”

  “How does 7.8 million profit grab you?” gloated Bullion.

  “Almost as good as still being in the premier league,” replied Friedegg.

  “Well, yes, that is nice, but it doesn’t match a 7.8 million profit on 32.6 million turnover. That’s almost twenty percent profit margin. Who can beat that? Name me one owner with better numbers than that?”

  “Beat it?” asked Friedegg shaking his head in amazement.

  “That’s right, I’ll say it again twenty percent, read ‘em and weep. I can run a business from soup to nuts, that’s me,” crowed Bullion.

  Friedegg thought about trying to reason that wouldn’t it have been better surviving in the Premier League than making a twenty percent profit? He reconsidered though and agreed with Bullion.

  “Yes, you might be right. Those numbers are off the wall,” he answered.

  Bullion filled Friedegg’s glass up. “Have I ever shown you my frog?”

  Friedegg was a little concerned by the way the conversation was moving. “I’m sorry?” he answered, trying to confirm what he had heard.

  “My frog, he’s a beauty. Come next door to my office and I’ll show you,” said Bullion proudly.

  Moreham Friedegg was a good man with family values and a solid constitution, but the chitchat had taken a serious turn for the worse. He wasn’t sure what Bullion was suggesting and more importantly he didn’t want to find out. Whatever Bullion liked to do in his own time was fine by Moreham, just don’t try and coerce him into it.

  “I don’t think I would be interested in that David. That sort of thing is not for me.”

  “Moreham, please. Live a little and experience something new for a change. It’s only a hobby.”

  “No, really, I’m not interested.”

  “Suit yourself, but you don’t know what you’re missing and don’t knock it until you’ve tried it,” reasoned Bullion.

  “Oh, don’t worry, I won’t say a word,” answered Moreham.

  Bullion looked at him strangely. Gold came over after seeing Friedegg in distress. He shook his hand.

  “Afternoon Moreham. Good work out today, fair result in the end, I think. What were your thoughts?”

  “Afternoon, Dee,” said Moreham, pondering the question.

  “It wasn’t a thriller, was it? But on the whole I thought we were all over you in the first half, then the game settled down and, to be honest, fizzled out in the end. I think it was a bit hot down there on the pitch today.”

  “Now, I thought it started slowly and got better as the game went on. Funny how you can watch the same game and come to two different conclusions.”

  “Quite. Well, it was hot, that’s for sure,” answered Moreham.

  “Yes, it was a very pleasant day in the director’s box. I’ve got a bit of a tan from today, I think,” said Gold.

  “You do look darker than normal, Dee,” said Bullion.

  Gold asked Moreham about what he’d got lined up in the transfer market for the new season. Moreham contemplated the question before answering.

  “We should be signing Da…dadada…Da…dadada hopefully in
the next few days. As you can see we are fretfully short of firepower up front so we expect him to fill that void as soon as all the medical work is done.”

  “Who?” Bullion asked.

  “The seventeenth president of the United States,” answered Friedegg.

  “AJ?” asked Gold.

  “Yes,” said Friedegg.

  “He’s a great player. I’m not sure why we let him go in that deal to be honest,” Gold answered, looking at Bullion.

  “Well, don’t look at me! It was your idea to go along with The Jolly Swagman, not me!” he answered, raising his voice.

  “Can I ask how much they want for AJ?” asked Gold.

  “Originally they wanted twelve but after negotiation and haggling over the medical issues, they’ve come down a bit to 10.5.”

  “Did you hear that? Over ten bloody grand! What’s the game coming to?” said Bullion.

  Gold didn’t like being embarrassed in public and wasn’t happy with Bullion’s outburst.

  “What do you care about the deal?”

  “Erm… it’s a lot of money?”

  “Yes, it’s a lot of money. Try putting another zero on the end of it,” answered Gold.

  Moreham coughed. “Erm… it’s three zeroes.”

  Gold and Bullion looked at each other in shock.

  “That is a lot,” they said in unison.

  Bullion shifted uncomfortably. He motioned to Gold to come closer.

  “Did you just here that? How come he can spend that amount and we can’t?”

  “Because the club isn’t bringing in those kind of numbers is it? The only way we are going to spend that kind of money, with no guarantee of staying up, I might add, is if it comes out of our own pockets.”

  They both broke out into uncontrollable laughter.

  “Well, we both know that isn’t going to happen,” said Bullion.

  “Besides what would you know about the deal? You’d only spend the money on silly lightbulbs anyway.”

  “Don’t mock me. I didn’t agree with letting him go so cheaply. Besides, there’s nothing silly about lightbulbs, do you know how many lightbulbs ten million pounds would buy?”

  “Well it doesn’t matter now, does it? We can’t change history. When the deal was done, I didn’t hear you yelling from the terraces. David, we all thought the bigger prize was The Jolly Swagman.”

  Bullion wasn’t a person to hold back on his thoughts, but he couldn’t argue with the stated fact. When they set about chasing The Jolly Swagman to be their new manager in 2001, they went to the ends of The Ar to get him. It took a protracted three months backwards and forwards on the Percy to get the deal done, and they paid heavy compensation too. Along with handing over the best youth prospect for years, they also had to put The Jolly Swagman on outback duties until an equitable solution had been achieved.