Soccerheads

  We are the Soccerheads.

  4.Too much ammo, Hammo!

  I’m really lucky that some of us the Soccerheads are in the same class at my new school. I get to see Hammo, Bella, Sofie and Giorgio each day. I’ve had Hammo over to my house once, but not yet with Giorgio at the same time.

  I would like to invite one of the girls over too; maybe Izzy, because she’s cool and a little bit awesome with her soccer skills but I’m still a bit worried that the other players might make fun of me. Groan.

  I had worked really hard all week to finish the homework and project work that my teacher Miss Sparkle had set us. My new school works its students to the bone with homework, and we all complain of having no skin on our hands and fingers from all of the work. Mum said if I finished the schoolwork and tidied up my room, I could have some free time on the weekend and she would let me invite some of the boys over for the day.

  Tidying up my room. Hmmm! That’s a challenge. I have these really awesome plastic buckets, much like a rubbish bin but much smaller. I sneak all sorts of things inside that really don’t need tidying. I call it a shortcut and Mum hardly ever notices, wondering sometimes how I tidy up so quickly. That’s why they’re awesome.

  Soccer socks are more of a challenge. I keep losing them, so Mum keeps buying me another pair. It drives her nuts. I eventually find the old ones, as the smell of wet, musty grass and dead feet builds to unbearable levels under my bed, sometimes becoming part of a nightmare and waking me in the middle of the night! Aaaaggggghhhhh, the sock monster!

  So, after homework and tidy up, one Sunday I had Giorgio and Hammo come over. It was awesome because Hammo brought over his Splatta set. That’s a shooting game where you hunt each other down and splat each with a gooey paint that sticks and stinks. The stink is ten times worse than a blocked toilet at school. The same type of stink, just a lot worse. Ten times worse. It’s so bad even Ruff runs away. It should be called a ‘Stinka’ set.

  We played with the Splatta set in the morning. This is where Giorgio really shines. He was brilliant at ducking and weaving around bushes near the house.

  My new house has bushes in the garden. Lots of them. The perfect place to set an ambush, wait for your prey, hold your breath and sit dead still. Then, just as they get close, hit them with the Splatta.

  The problem was, Giorgio didn’t need bushes. Every time Hammo or I got close to him with the Splatta gun, Giorgio would wait for us to pull the trigger and then leap off into thin air, just like a professional goalie. Giorgio was just too good for us; clean as a whistle after we tried to splat him fifty times. Oh man, he can dive.

  Hammo was getting stirred up at how good Giorgio was, with hardly a spot of splatter paint on him.

  ‘If only you were that good in goal,’ mocked Hammo toward the end of the game. In that instant, Giorgio had the gun pointed point blank at Hammo and accidentally shot him with a cannonball of a shot at close range.

  Splat! The mark on his shirt looked worse than getting pooed on by fifty parrots.

  ‘Ooopps. Sorrrrry Hammo,’ uttered Giorgio in a sorry tone.

  Hammo’s face turned red. Not beetroot red, but heading in that direction.

  ‘You did that on purpose Giorgio. You idiot. That’s not how the game works. Look at me shirt.’

  Giorgio was more than sorry but Hammo was in no mood to see Giorgio’s mistake, storming off to wash his shirt. I gave him a spare one of mine to put on.

  We started playing soccer games on my gamer box. Mum had just bought me Soccerama 14, so we set up a game of Spain versus Brazil. You can’t get any better competition than that. My Dad has the same game at his house and my sister Sally and I play it when we go visit him every second weekend.

  It’s awesome, with the commentator sounding so real.

  ‘Ribaldo now, dribbles forward …. and … a quick two step… oh what a move… he just glided by those two defenders … shoots… ooohhh just over the crossbar.’

  Giorgio is a bit new to gaming. He didn’t have one back in Romania, so Hammo and I took turns to play against him with the two remotes.

  The game is so real the way it’s set up, if you don’t get your player moving properly, the commentator actually says ‘What is that defender doing?’ It was funny the first time but Giorgio started to feel down when it kept happening again and again.

  I felt sorry for him.

  Hammo doesn’t like to lose, and I could see he was trying to get back at Giorgio, the Splatta champion.

  ‘Oh, come on Giorgio that was an easy pass,’ Hammo mumbled as Giorgio missed one. By the time he had worked out which button and toggle to use to move the player, Hammo had taken the ball off him.

  ‘You’re going to have to do better than that mate,’ said Hammo sarcastically. Giorgio got up to go to the toilet, but his eyes said he was a bit upset with Hammo. I waited until Giorgio left the room and then I had to say something.

  ‘Hammo, that’s not very nice what you’re saying to him. He’s only learning and it’s all new for him. We’re all mates on the same team you know, and it’s not good to show off.’

  Hammo looked surprised by my comment, nodding his head and going silent, but chewing over what I had said; maybe also thinking about getting splattered at close range.

  When Giorgio came back, Hammo was a lot more encouraging towards Giorgio.

  Yes, it worked. Hey, I was doing my job.

  During the last part of the afternoon, we went to play soccer outside.

  Since starting with the Soccerheads, I’ve been practicing heaps at home against our wall. One side of the house opposite the kitchen has a long wall with only one window, so Iv’e been bashing a ball against it too, just like Hammo does, so maybe I can get some of the same ammo.

  I showed Hammo and Giorgio the ball.

  ‘Yeah, that’s good. Let’s go round the other side to play,’ suggested Hammo.

  We started a game. My team had my younger sister Sally, Ruff and myself against the two boys. Sally has started to get interested in soccer, but she is nowhere near as crazy about the game as we Soccerheads are.

  You might wonder how a dog can play a game of soccer. Well, the goal he scored in training is no coincidence. Ruff gets regular practice and his main trick is to get the ball between his front and back legs and twirl on the spot. This puts the ball in a doggie spin, and if you know where to stand, you’ll get an excellent paw pass.

  ‘Stay away from the window,’ hollered Mum as we started playing.

  Well, the game only lasted two minutes. Hammo intercepted a pass from me to Sally, took two steps forward and transformed himself.

  ‘Sammy, something happened out there. I wasn’t me. One minute I’m Hammo, and the next I’m Kaku, you know the star forward from Brazil in Soccerama, and so I let rip with an ammo shot.’

  Hammo’s ammo!

  ‘The crowd roared Sammy, I heard them roar but then I realised the roar was the glass crashing on the ground.’

  The shot missed the goal completely and cruised in missile mode straight into the kitchen window.

  Smash! Shattered glass fell everywhere, followed by a ‘sssssssssssss’ sound as air rushed out of the ball. A hole in the ball and an even bigger hole in the window!

  ‘Hammo..,’ I could hear my Mum raising her voice as she walked towards the kitchen window.

 

  ‘Sorry,’ said Hammo in a quivery voice as Giorgio, Sally and I darted behind some bushes, leaving him all alone to face my Mum.

  Then we realised that was a dumb thing to do and walked back to the house with Hammo following behind.

  New house. New window. I thought Mum would crack. Surprisingly she wasn’t too upset and told us to clean it all up.

  ‘We’ll get it fixed,’ she said without sounding too cross.

  ‘Now what are you going to do to stop it happening again?’ she asked.

  ‘Not play soccer,’ said Sally, without thinking it through very well. Younger sisters h
ave a habit of doing that.

  ‘That’s not an option.’ I mumbled under my breath to Hammo, looking at the shattered mess.

  ‘Now clean it up. Watch those small bits of glass,’ she said as we went about finding pans and brushes.

  ‘We’ll move the goals Mum … a long way from the house,’ I replied.

  We are the Soccerheads.

  5.Marchflies get bitten

  Crunch time. Halfway through the season we were hosting the toughest team in the league at Unicorn Park, our home ground.

  Do or die.

  Mighty Marchflies. Top of the table.

  Soccerheads. Halfway down the table with no hope of making the finals and the premiership unless we won today and started stringing a few more wins together.

  I’d studied the league ladder in our club newsletter; crunched out and calculated our chances. Not like maths at school. No, No. This was real.

  Real maths.

  How many points.

  Goals for. Goals against.

  Nothing like Mooshy United.

  But now, this was my job. Keep the team going.

  I went through the maths with Dad on the way to the game. That was the first time in a while he’d taken me. Maybe he didn’t like Mooshy either.

  ‘That’s a surprise Sammy, you and these calculations. Your new school must be making a mark on you,’ he commented as I went through the figures.

  ‘No, no Dad. This isn’t like school with all those make believe sums. This is real. Do or die maths. It’s the real world Dad.’

  I never said that, but man I wanted to. You don’t say those things to Mum and Dad when it’s about school, otherwise they’ll be all over you when you’re doing homework.

  #

  ‘Hammo, this is it,’ I said as we started lacing up for the game in the change room.

  ‘We haven’t won enough games yet and if we don’t win this one, we won’t have enough points to reach the finals playoffs. That would only leave the carnival to win something.’

  ‘Well, we better win.’

  Hammo is pretty basic. Not as basic as Buck, but still basic.

  Izzy and Rado overheard our talk as my voice echoed around the change room. They were poles apart. North Pole. South Pole.

  ‘Just so long as we play well. I don’t care if we win or lose,’ said Izzy, not really concerned about the result. North Pole.

  ‘No, we must win. I want to win. Losing is not good. We need points,’ declared Rado.

  ‘Back in Croatia, we always play to win. Losing is not good!’ South Pole.

  Good grief. Which way was I going to go with this? I wanted to make an impression with Izzy, but not seem a wimp with Hammo and Rado.

  I was getting suckered in both ways.

  ‘Well, we’ll do our best today, but there’s always the carnival coming up if we don’t win the premiership,’ I offered. Hopefully that would please all of them.

  Hammo butted in with nastily.

  ‘Carnivals. Carnivals. You don’t get the best teams going to the carnivals Sammy. Get real. We have to beat the best teams.’

  Oh, well thanks a lot Hammo I sighed to myself, sitting down on the bench against the wall. How about just playing because you want to.

  So you can be with your friends.

  Enjoy the game.

  I’m going to let you have it Hammo. Here, in front of all the others.

  You deserve it.

  Even if you are my friend.

  I stood up, about to let fly and got hooked.

  Aaahhh. The hook above the bench caught on the inside of my jersey, pulling me into the wall. Aarggh @#$%, by the time I got off the hook, Hammo had walked outside.

  Maybe just as well I thought as I made my way out of the change room. If I didn’t get hooked on the hook, I might have said something stupid.

  Sometimes Hammo says stuff without thinking, and in front of everyone. I kept away from him, trying to hide my eyes as they started to get misty.

  Izzy sneaked up behind me as we stepped on to the field, nearly scaring me out of my boots as she whispered something close to my ear in her soft voice.

  ‘You said the right thing Sammy. We don’t always have to win,’ she said reassuringly.

  ‘Hammo’s always been like that. Even when he was in the under sixers. He hates losing, and so does his Dad. We’ve had to put up with it for years,’ she ended.

  That explains it. Hammo’s been thinking like that for years.

  I felt a million times better after that.

  Brainwave!

  Yikes, I think she likes me.

  ‘Thanks Izzy,’ I replied, but looking away so she couldn’t see my all upset.

  Hang in there Sammy.

  Mr C called us in. It was team talk time.

  ‘OK team, we’ll have to watch these guys today. They don’t like to lose and you know what they do if they start falling behind.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Maggie.

  ‘They stack their defence and you can’t get through.’

  ‘And they dive,’ said Lefty.

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ reassured Mr C.

  ‘We play by the rules and we play fairly. Some of those kids watch too much of those big league games on the TV and get strange ideas. Diving is a low tactic.’

  ‘Keep passing the ball between the midfielders. Izzy, Buck and you Maggie, keep those triangles and draw their defence out. Short passes. Those defenders won’t be able to resist, and sooner or later they’ll come out at you. While you’re doing that, Sunwell, Sofie and Lefty need to stay unmarked.’

  Izzy filled me in on the rest, telling me how the Marchflies use pouncing tactics, where two players hunt down whoever has the ball.

  ‘Don’t hang on to the ball Sammy. They’ll gang up on you.’ Hhmmm, I had to be careful with that one. Not being much of a dribbler, I had to pass quickly.

  We got together for our team huddle. It was Buck’s turn.

  ‘Let’s rumble, Thoccerheads,’ he muttered through the gap between his teeth.

  Rumble? I suppose that means roar, and whatever else rhymes with rumble. Anyway, it sounded tough.

  Our home games at Unicorn Park are always a treat. Plenty of spectators come along to watch. Nothing like Mooshy United. Big crowds of mums & dads, brothers and sisters, and grannies too. We know Lefty’s grandma because she waves her walking stick in the air when she gets excited, and you can hear her from anywhere on the field.

  There was a real buzz on the pitch and an even bigger buzz coming from the edge of it. I’d never seen so many people come to watch a game. There were rows of spectators, all chanting our club name.

  ‘Go go Uni’s, go Unicorns, stick em with your horns.’

  My legs felt a bit wobbly with all the excitement. Dad was keen to see me play, so my legs felt extra wobbly! I couldn’t see him in the crowd. Too many people.

  First half.

  We got caught off guard straight away. Hammo, Rado and I were moving out the defence. Suddenly, from nowhere a blistering little attacker came at us, shorter than me and zippier than a mouse being chased by fifty cats.

  Zing to the left. Zing to the right.

  Suddenly, Sofie and Sunwell were beaten. He dribbled the ball closer to goal.

  Closer.

  Closer.

  Hammo was beaten. Rado and I were either side of him but couldn’t quite get our boot to the ball. Reach and miss.

  Reach and miss.

  Aaaarrrrgggghhhhh!

  Things were about to go sideways.

  Nobody had told us about this. Where did he come from?

  He took a shot.

  Giorgio leapt at full stretch, like a rubber band being let loose between the posts. Ping! He tapped the ball out across the line. What a save! The crowd erupted.

  ‘Go Unicorns, stick em with your horns,’ hollered the crowd.

  ‘Wooop.Wooop.Wooop.’

  Who was that, the loudest of them all? Looking across, I
saw a supporter waving a hooked stick in the air. It was Lefty’s grandma and she was wound up!

  ‘Wooop.Wooop.Woooop. Well done kids. Show them how it’s done,’ she bellowed over the rest of the crowd.

  ‘

  It wasn’t long before we had the ball at the other end and followed Mr C’s plan.The Marchflies had stacked their defence with five players and they weren’t going to budge.

  Tik, tik, tik. We put together some great passes but kept hitting the wall. Marchfly Wall.

  Second half.

  Buck had said ‘lets rumble,’ and he started to rumble. Just as the whistle blew, Buck transformed himself into a steamroller.

  Mission: Steamroll Marchfly Wall.

  When: Second half.

  Method: Full throttle.

  Trapping an aerial pass from Rado behind the hallway line, he took it forward like a crazy man. Buck did not turn, spin, slide or do any fancy stuff. Dribbling in one straight line, straight for goal.

  ‘Buck, pass it here,’ cried out Izzy in annoyance from a free space.

  ‘Buck, I’m over here. I’m free,’ shouted Sunwell.

  ’Oh, Buck, you truck,’ he said hopelessly, hands on hips.

  Buck was in steamroller world, on a one-way mission to the goal.

  A midfielder tackled him and got his foot caught against the steamroller’s foot, the foot that was attached to Buck. I learned in science that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. The midfielder was catapulted into a somersault, flipping and tumbling through mid-air. That was the reaction!

  Next, the number three for Marchflies went in for a tackle, and probably knew he was beaten, so he did what he thought was best. He went for the tackle and took a dive!

  The mass of spectators exploded. It was a home crowd and they were on Buck’s side. Grandma had her hooked stick shaking high.

  Oh man, Buck was red-faced and angry. Beetroot red.

  ‘You’ve got to be kiddin me,’ he growled at the kid like an angry bear. The referee blew the whistle and intervened.

  ‘Take it easy number five,’ he said firmly, putting his palm up in front of Buck. ‘That was not a trip. Number three dived.’

  This time the referee picked it up.

  Excellent decision referee.