The Fantasy Player

By Gareth Cadwallader

This is a story about the future of football. A new star emerges in a game that attracts, and demands, ever greater extremes of wealth, fame, and physical prowess. Ardro Holst, in his pursuit of glory, has to work out what is real and what is false, in sport, in life, and in love, in a new world i

• Language: English
• Publisher: Writesideleft
• Release date: Sep 30, 2022
• ISBN: 9781739699352

Gareth Cadwallader

My first novel, Watkins & Son is published by Wet Zebra. My play, Cleopatra, has been performed at the Kings Head and Hope theatres in Islington. Madame Manet and Blood-Crossed have been performed at the Tabard in Chiswick. I’m currently working on a collection of short stories based loosely around The Fall. When off the field of combat, I work with entrepreneurs in London helping them grow their businesses.

Book preview

ebook_cover_copy.jpg

A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR

Gareth Cadwallader’s first novel is Watkins & Co (Wet Zebra, 2016). His play, Cleopatra, has been performed at The King’s Head and Hope theatres in Islington. Madame Manet and Blood-Crossed have been performed at the Tabard in Chiswick. He has written a collection of short stories, States of Man (WriteSideLeft, 2019).

When off the field of combat, he works with entrepreneurs in London helping them grow their businesses.

The Fantasy Player

Gareth Cadwallader

Copyright © Gareth Cadwallader 2022

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author.

ISBN: TBP 978-1-7396993-3-8

ISBN HB 978-1-7396993-4-5

ISBN eBook 978-1-7396993-5-2

Compilation & Cover Design by S A Harrison

Published by WriteSideLeft UK

https://www.writesideleft.com

Contents

The Players

I am Ardro Holst

Miranda Glass

The Other Ardro Holst

Playing on the Grass with Richard

With the Blues

Fulvia Perez

In the Locker Room

Merry Brinkley

Harry

Jim Stone

Falling in Love

The Trouble with Richard

The Investigator

Abandoned Ship

Lucio

Internacional

Sudden Death

A Kind of Rebirth

Pete Iannotti

Tandy Spinks

Gold Star

The Players

The Agency

Jim Stone – The Owner of The Jim Stone Agency

Merry Brinkley – Client Account Manager of Ardro Holst

Francine – A junior Client Liaison Executive

Fulvia Perez – A Property of the Jim Stone Agency

Chantelle – Client Account Manager of Fulvia Perez

Linda Mc Faul – Estate Manager at the Jim Stone Agency

Taki – Ardro Holst’s Hairdresser

The Reds

Pete Iannotti – General Manager of the Club

Lucio – Head Coach

Bibi Thorsen – Hand Therapist

Panda – Head of Security

Harris – Goalkeeper, One–time All–Star

Lee (Two) – Right Full Back

Lee (One) – Centre Back

Golightly – Centre Back and Captain of the Reds

Jerzi – Left Back

Ardro Holst – Number Six, Defensive Midfielder, A Property of the Jim Stone Agency

Kelso – Right-sided Midfielder

Ojo – Left–sided Midfielder

Goufal – Number Ten, Attacking Midfielder, Three times All-Star

Barracca – Striker, Five-times All-Star

Ridolfo – Striker

Hero Chan – Substitute, Attacking Midfielder

Donny Bennett – Substitute, Defender

Other Players et al

Jacomo – An ex-Player with the Reds, now a journalist

Hariko (Harry) Hakamoto – A Player for the Azzurri

Ichiko Hakamoto – Harry’s sister

Tandy Spinks – An All-Star Player in the Women’s Game

Fritzi – A veteran Player with the Blues

Lansing – A Striker with United

The Holsts

Miranda Glass – Ardro Holst’s girlfriend

Mr and Mrs Holst – Ardro’s Parents

Richard Holst – Ardro’s brother

Rosaleen Holst – Richard’s wife

Ardro’s Team

Tom Knaup – Personal Trainer

Carly – Nutritionist

Thibault (Tibi) – Sleep & Recuperation Coach

Craig – Masseur

Debi – Hand Therapist

Pran – Cranial Osteopath

The Hauptmanns

Ingrid Hauptmann – A young girl

Ralph and Hannah Hauptmann – Ingrid’s parents

Arvind Gupta – The Agency’s lawyer

Counsellor Bellcourt – The Federation’s Investigator

I am Ardro Holst

I was driven in from the desert early in the morning. The city was all stripes of gleaming glass and deep shadow along the glimmering swathe of the Gulf. The driver from the Agency had said his name was something like Curt. The vehicle didn’t need a driver, but a second occupant diverted attention from the famous one. Panda, the Club’s Head of Security, lectured us at the start of each season about the absolute imperative for Anonymity. Not just anonymity, but layers of anonymity.

As you become celebrities, he said, chuckling because he, alone among the officials at the Club, thought this was a child-like thing to become, You must know how to become invisible; how not to appear.

The Agency had rented a spacious house designed like a traditional tented structure on the edge of the desert, but the Assessment Centre was at the New Kalifah development on the waterfront. On the incoming streams on my wrist-strap I could see that the district was already filling up with fans. From the Agency, Merry had messaged me to say there were tens of thousands of people surrounding the convention centre at which the Assessment was taking place.

The Club had chosen to hold its pre-Season Assessment Centre here in Dubai, or more accurately, the Dubai authorities had provided sufficient inducement for the Club to do so. Fans were congregating from all around the world. For what? I wondered. Surely not just for the chance to see the Players. Their chances of meeting a Player in the flesh were vanishingly small, except for a fleeting glimpse at a distance of someone who might be Goufal or Barracca getting into their transportation. What brought them here, from Japan and Australia and Ireland and Uzbekistan?

The sweeping glass curves of the New Kalifah loomed larger in the vehicle’s windscreen, the sun’s reflection so bright that Curt moved to darken the glass. Everywhere, the buildings were clad in the Club’s colours, red with green-and-white trim covering the frontages of entire blocks, the logos of the Event Sponsor, the League Sponsor’s logo, the Federation’s logo. The city was hosting the end-of-Season Play-Offs, and this was an early part of the build-up. Flags along the streets celebrated the Club’s many trophies, all the way back to the eighteen-hundred-and-somethings, including their one World Championship of the Played-on-Screen era, in Thirty-Nine.

As we turned onto the approach road, the sidewalks were suddenly full of people, people moving in a rhythm; loose at first, just a shared jauntiness, but growing tighter and hotter as the crowd compressed. We were still, I don’t know, a kilometre away from the Centre. The crowd was thick enough that they could only move if they did so in unison. A father and son, maybe Korean, pinching one another’s shirts so as not to lose each other, seemed to be dancing on tiptoes in time to the motion around them. A man was caught up in the onrush, making tiny running steps, with his chin up in the air, calling for someone. A couple of grizzly older guys, fans from the days when the Game was played on grass, passed a hip flask back and forth, singing snatches of old chants between slugs. The crowd had been overtaken by a current driven less by individual human motivations than by the movement of the moon, or the electromagnetic field emanating from a multitude of excited neural networks.

There were police in clusters along the route, but they had underestimated the numbers. I was spellbound. I hadn’t looked at my wrist-strap for several minutes and wouldn’t think to look again until I was already inside the Centre, where I read a message from Merry, telling me the numbers were up to over a hundred thousand. A hundred thousand people, gathered from everywhere into this single square mile of a city in which the Game wasn’t even played: to witness what?

People were spilling into the road. The vehicle kept stopping, sounding its alert, then creeping forward again. Curt was calling in to his contact at the Agency to check for instructions. Jerzi’s vehicle was a hundred metres further up the road, he said, also halted by the overflowing crowd. Almost everyone wore red, the Club colours; not just red, but the specified red licensed by the Club. Tens of thousands of people wearing red replica-shirts, red caps, draped with old-school red and white scarves. A few wore the alternative colours, the Change Strip, as it was known for reasons no one could recall, green and black; just enough people to intensify the redness of everything else. Hands started smacking on the vehicle roof as people were pressed against the sides. Faces peered in, wanting to know who was in the ee-vee behind the darkened glass. We hadn’t moved forward in more than a minute.

Hey Curt, I said, but he didn’t respond. Maybe that wasn’t his name.

Then he started talking and listening to an urgent voice speaking in Arabic. He half-turned in his seat, The people with Barracca, he said, They’ve turned around and are going to take him in by chopper.

The hand slaps on the vehicle roof had evolved into a regular rhythm, pounding out one of the Club’s traditional chants.

Jerzi’s vehicle is going to reverse back to us, he said. We will go back to the heliport together.

How are we going to reverse through the crowd?

They had packed in behind us. The people had lost their individuality. The field of faces had grown intense, sweatier and wilder-eyed.

They are going to bring in the water cannon, Curt said, as though this were a detail like, I am going to darken the windscreen. There were almost no women.

Do not worry, he said, I am armed.

There was a girl of maybe ten or twelve pressed against the vehicle, trying to look inside. She had shoulder-length, dark brown hair. I looked among the men around her trying to identify the father who’d brought her into this madness, but the ecstatic fury in their faces and the sweat-darkened hair plastered across their foreheads made them all look the same. The girl couldn’t twist her face all the way around. She tried to look in with one wide eye pressed against the window. My face was about six inches from hers, but she couldn’t see me.

I realised she was being crushed against the car. She was gasping for breath. Her hand, which had left a moist palm print where it had first been pressed, was now clawing at the glass as though instinctively understanding that it was through the window that the nearest breathable air was to be found.

Where was the girl’s father? I thought. What was he thinking, letting her loose in this crowd? There was chanting, more concerted now, the old songs that the fans sang after a victory. Normally, I might have hummed along, because there is nothing so sweet as to take off my headphones and hear those songs at the end of a match. But this sound was more like an enormous, muffled ocean that the girl and I were drowning in. She no longer looked desperate. Now her eyes had gone a little vacant and the skin of her face had gone slack. My heart was pounding. I put my hands up to the window.

Curt, or whoever he was, said, Sit tight, boss. I’m going to try reversing.

As the vehicle jerked backwards the crowd collapsed against it. The girl slouched towards the front of the car, turning her back slightly towards me. My name was written across her shoulders: ARDRO. I could see the top of my white number 6.

Lower the window, I said to Curt. Lower this window.

I can’t do that, boss, he said.

I said, Do it. Give me the manual control.

He started to say something about security risk, but I put a hand on his arm and another on the back of his neck. I am a very strong one-hundred-and-twelve kilo man whose hands are insured for a billion Euros.

Curt knew all this.

You threatening me! he complained, though he was the one who had claimed to be armed and surely knew that I wouldn’t dare hurt him. You assaulting me! You can’t do that. I’m here to protect you and you assaulting me, boss.

But he gave up control of the window and I opened it half way. The heat blasted in my face. The crowd’s sweat cloyed in my nostrils. I shouted into the din, Give me some room. Let me open the door.

The men gazed in amazement. For a moment they said nothing. They stared at me as though I must be an extra-terrestrial, and stepped back far enough to let me open the door to squeeze out. It was like thrusting my face into a roasting grill. I stood there in my red presentation jacket and jogging pants a head taller than anyone else. And I understood in just a fragment of a second that has stayed with me; I understood why they had come, why they were here in this impossible heat, in the dehumanising crush. It was just to be part of this, part of something so real. They came to feel their individuality simultaneously annihilated and infinitely expanded.

This girl, I shouted, did none of you see this girl?

As the crowd stepped back, she slumped onto the blacktop. I picked her up, checking that she was breathing. I could hear men shouting to the people behind them: Oh My God! It’s Ardro Holst. No, it really is. A woman somewhere further away started screaming. People started chanting, Ardro! Ardro! Ardro! They held wrist-straps or phones over their heads taking photos or live streaming. Oh God! I thought, this is going to get me into so much trouble. I reached into the ee-vee and pulled out a bottle of water. For a moment, I wondered whether the Agency would have put something in my water that the girl shouldn’t drink, but there was nothing for it but to let her take a sip. She opened her eyes and took a deeper breath. The viscous air was full of the sound of my name being chanted and the hook line from one of the Club’s old songs.

Do you have a phone? I had to shout though I was thirty centimetres from her face.

She started crying, I’ve lost it. I dropped it somewhere.

I looked around on the road surface, until someone patted me on the head.

I was getting angry. Has anyone seen this girl’s phone? I shouted into their flushed, shiny faces. All I got in return was my name thrown back at me, Ardro! Ardro! Ardro! I hoisted the girl up on one shoulder and turned around hoping one of her parents, who must be looking for her desperately, would see her and wave to us. But for a hundred metres around, everyone was looking towards us, waving or holding up their phones and shouting and chanting my name. It was hopeless.

People wanted my autograph.

I said, We have to find this girl’s parents.

They offered me their hands, their shirts, their foreheads, on which to make my mark, my special AH, one on top of the other. Like Albrecht Durer, my mother had said, when she showed me how to do it. An artist, she’d explained much later, after I’d assumed for many years that he must have been a Player from the old days, from the Played-on-Grass era. AH: they wanted it on their clothes, on their bodies. And I was just a young, Emerging Player, as the pundits had dubbed me. What must it be like for Barracca, or Goufal, I wondered; the real stars.

Do you see your father? I asked her.

She shook her head, still in a daze. A whiskery old man in a Champions of the World ’39 tee-shirt bent over and asked for an autograph on his left buttock cheek, next to a tattoo of the Club’s crest. Someone put a red and white scarf around my neck and patted me on the cheek.

A couple of hundred metres behind, I could see the spray from the water cannon and the crowds fanning out, climbing onto fences and building facades and disappearing through gaps between buildings.

You’d better get off the road, I shouted at the crowd.

But all they did by way of response was chant my name. They were improvising a song, handed down through the eras, about Number Six.

Curt was banging on the window, gesturing for me to get inside. My presentation jacket was saturated with sweat. I had the girl up on my shoulder, and the scarf was wrapped tight around my throat. I could see the dark stains under my armpits and across my chest. More people were putting their hands on me. They patted me on the back and shoulders and wished me good luck. I could feel the dampness down my spine and along the crease of my groin and the dark sweat stain behind my knees. They pushed a woman through to the front. I thought she might be the girl’s mother, but all she wanted was to get her picture taken giving me a kiss.

The girl slumped back against my head. I shouted, Where are this girl’s parents? They tried to grab my hands. No, I started screaming, No! Not my hands. Not my hands. And I thought I must put the girl down and get back in the vehicle. Then Jerzi ran up, pushed through the crowd by two huge security guards waving short cudgels around at about shoulder height, with a towel over his head, like a criminal, and we were pushed down and into the vehicle with the girl still in my arms.

It was almost silent inside the vehicle.

Turn off that aircon, will ya, Jerzi shouted abruptly at the driver. You wanna freeze us to death?

Curt started to say that the aircon was at its regular setting, but one of the security guys cut him off. You stay quiet and keep your head down, man. You in a shithole of trouble, letting the Player outa the vehicle.

He put his hand on my neck, man; I had to let him out, Curt appealed.

The guards rolled their eyes, as though to say, Amateur.

You gonna kill us all back here, man, Jerzi shouted again. We got our Assessment Centre starting in about fifty minutes. I gotta get my head unscrambled.

With a great show of reluctance, Curt switched off the aircon.

Hey, Jerzi, I said. You ever seen anything like that?

Jerzi was one of those Brazilians who only has one name. I mean, he has four or five names, at least one of which is da Silva – okay two of which – but he is only ever called Jerzi by anyone except maybe his mother. He had come to the Club a year after me, when Lucio arrived as coach, and he’d had a few seasons in and out of the team at Azzuri before that: not a super-star, but good pro. A left back, or as he always insists, a marauding left back, which is how the media have tagged him.

It was like this in Tokyo a few years back, he said.

No, but really, I persisted. You ever felt that before? The crowd-heat, the intensity, the…the meaningfulness of it?

There were five of us in the back of the vehicle. Jerzi fiddled with his headphones, wanting to put them back on and insulate himself from all that meaningfulness.

A couple of people were slapping their hands on the roof and windows. I thought at first it might be the girl’s parents. I was about to say, Look! It’s your Mama and Papa, but it was just a couple of young guys, pressing their faces to the darkened glass and shouting out our names over and over. My God! I thought, This is what it’s like to be known. Curt was trying to do a three-point turn across the road, banging his fist on the warning klaxon, trying to edge the men away, as he spun the vehicle towards the approaching water cannon.

Jerzi leant against me and said, mock-confidentially, Who’s the chick?

The girl sat between the two huge bodyguards. I hadn’t noticed, but she was weeping. She wanted to know when she would see her Mama and Papa.

Jerzi said, You should’na brought her into the transport. We in enough trouble as is, man.

It was true. We were going to be in a lot of trouble for mixing with the crowd, and probably for being late, even though it wasn’t our fault.

What’s your name, I asked her.

It took her a few breaths to stop her chest from shaking so that she could speak: Are you really Ardro Holst?

I nodded and smiled. Yeah, I really am. And this is Jerzi.

I said this thinking that she would be dazzled by the bigger star. But the girl kept her eyes on me.

My Mama is in love with you. That’s what Papa says.

I laughed. The streams were full of this sort of stuff.

Where are you from?

Hamburg. Are you ever going to give me back to my Mama and Papa?

I started to pat her on the knee and then thought better of it.

Of course we are. Just as soon as we can find them.

The driver called back over his shoulder, You ain’t gonna have any problem with that. The pictures are all over every stream.

One of the security guys waved an arm over his shoulder and slapped the driver across the side of his head. You keep your head down, man.

Jerzi was pink in the face. He had beads of sweat on his forehead.

Okay! Okay! He called out. I give in. Give me a blast of aircon for the love of Jesus.

Can I have a photo with you? the girl asked.

Sure, come and sit here with Jerzi and me.

One of the guards took a photo on my phone.

I’ll share it with your parents, I said. What’s your name?

Hauptmann.

It sounded like a big name for such a small, lost girl.

Ingrid Hauptmann.

Almost before Curt had stopped the vehicle, the doors were thrown open and Club Security officials had us jogging through the heliport.

Where’s the girl? I asked them. We’ve got to get her to her parents.

Don’t you worry about that, they said. We gotta get you to the Assessment Centre.

No, no, no, we can’t leave her here.

The police’ll deal with it, one of them said, waving unconvincingly towards where he thought the police might be.

I couldn’t see any police.

What police? Listen, we’ve got to take her in the chopper. We can hand her to the police at the Centre.

Not gonna happen, one of the officials said, panting now as they jogged alongside us. Club employees only in the chopper.

Jerzi said, My guys comin’ on. They go everywhere with me.

The Club Security officials just kept us moving, leading us by the elbows.

No one else is allowed on the chopper. Club staff only.

Jerzi halted in a long, windowless passageway leading out to a departure gate.

I don’t go without my body men.

I was looking back into the main lounge. I couldn’t see the girl, Ingrid.

Where’s the girl, gone? I asked but no one was listening.

Listen to me, one of the Club officials said, baring his teeth, you got an Assessment Centre starting in thirty minutes, and we got Barracca waiting in the helicopter for you two clowns. Now, either get on board, or forget playing for this Club this season.

My god! I said half under my breath, we’ve been keeping Barracca waiting.

We all started moving again, Jerzi turning back to his guards and shrugging as we jogged away.

Hey guys, I shouted back to them, Take care of the girl, will you?

They looked at each other, seemingly at a loss.

What girl? they called back, Not any business of ours, they said, shaking their heads, and turning away.

Barracca was asleep in the helicopter, in a lionsome stretch in the corner with his headphones on. We bundled in, almost on top of each other, two of the Club officials pushing their way in behind us. Barracca stirred from his sleep, slowly removed one headphone and said, very grumpily, You guys been keeping me waiting.

He turned back into the corner and closed his eyes.

As we banked towards the Convention Centre, I could see the red flags, the caps and jackets and building facades fanning out like rivers. It felt like some call had gone out, and a huge global tribe had assembled from every corner of the world.

Jerzi was muttering, I’m frazzled, man. The Assessment Centre supposed to start in, like, ten minutes, and I’m just one hundred per cent in pieces on the carpet, man.

It occurred to me that we’d been pretty lucky, that Barracca was in the chopper with us. Even if we were late – even if we’d broken every rule of unsupervised engagement with the public – they were going to get us into the Assessment Centre, because for Barracca they would make allowances, with Barracca we were safe.

As we landed, the two security men whisked Barracca and Jerzi away into the main building. A hundred thousand voices rose up chanting Barracca’s name, just from a glimpse of him at fifty metres distance. It was like a physical force that chant hammering through the dense, shimmering heat. I was left feeling like maybe I hadn’t been so fortunate, after all.

Pete Iannotti, one of the guys who ran the Club, came towards me and guided me towards a different entrance.

Keep Jerzi out of this, he muttered menacingly.

We entered the cool silence of a small reception room, in which a couple of local men in dark suits and ties stood together, looking a little nervous.

With the door closed on the outside world, he fairly erupted with fury.

What exactly the fuck have you been up to with that girl? Iannotti wanted to know.

I started to answer, but he waved his hands, shouting, Don’t say anything. Not a word. I don’t wanna hear it. Then more calmly, These two gentlemen are from the local police. They are going to want to interview you about this incident.

I started to say, What incident?

But this only threw him back into a rage, and he shouted me down.

Very, very kindly, he turned to the two detectives and made a little bow, the detectives here have agreed to let you carry on with your Assessment Centre and they’ll interview you and take your statement at the end of the afternoon.

I turned to the two men and nodded and said, Thank you.

Iannotti, sneered at me.

You are one of the luckiest bastards on the planet, Ardro. The police have been more than understanding. Let’s see if can get your shit together and earn yourself a contract to play the Game.

Miranda Glass

At eleven o’clock that night, I was back at my tented desert villa, looking out at the billion stars that covered the sky. Orion was higher above the horizon than I was used to, and below his belt, Sirius was brighter than I’d ever seen it before. Sirius was my star. That was what they’d called me at the Academy. The hunting dog, chaser after loose balls, biter into hard tackles, protector of the ball once it had been won. Sirius is a double star, two stars almost perfectly in line with each other when viewed from the Earth. And I was two players in one, also a fast counter-attacker, a potent shot-maker and scorer of the occasional goal. Sirius.

The police had questioned me about a possible abduction and abandonment of a minor. The grilling I’d got about what happened at the heliport was excruciating. Looked at from any distance it had been indefensible to just lose track of her. I’d managed not to say, The Club officials were in charge, or, we were keeping Barracca waiting, or, I was afraid I would miss the Assessment Centre and my chance of playing for the season, all of which were the truth. Instead, I’d fallen back on just repeating that the situation was chaotic and I’d been told the police were taking care of her. This was also true, but a shallower, thinner truth.

Iannotti stood behind me throughout, a large, dark, squaresome presence. The one time I turned to look at him, his face was grey and set like stone. After an hour and a quarter, he’d put his hand on the desk and said, I think, Gentlemen, that that is enough. And, without demurring, they nodded and packed up their papers and left. Then he ripped into me for twenty minutes, reminding me of what the Club expected of its Players and how far below the mark I had fallen. Almost in mid-sentence, he turned and left, switching off the lights as he slammed the door.

My assistant, Miranda called. I’m so proud of you, baby, she said. She saw the bemusement on my face. The streams are raving about you. Putting yourself at risk to rescue that girl. No other Player would have done that.

She was following what the Agency called the Red Channels, media sources that were neutral- to- favourable. It was in my contract that I could only follow streams that the Agency filtered for me. I knew there were a thousand channels that would be out there spinning very different stories.

How did it go? she wanted to know, still in her bouncy, upbeat voice.

What? I said. Apart from the interview with the police and the god-awful ball-busting I got from Pete Iannotti, you mean.

I mean the Assessment.

In the chopper, Jerzi had got himself frazzled enough for both of us, and the session with the police had baffled and unsettled me. But once the Assessment started, it was so intense and I was so focused that the earlier events of the morning, along with everything else in my world, receded to a tiny dot on my mental horizon. The morning was devoted to gym work. With twenty, thirty or forty kilo weights on our shoulders we did our reps. Hang cleans, snatches, squat jumps, standing jumps, short sprints, long sprints, one-armed press-ups with feet elevated thirty degrees, one legged squats standing on an exercise ball, the dreaded burpees.

Our performance in each exercise was measured in repetition after repetition for two-and-a-half-hours, along with our decay rates, that measured how rapidly our performance declined. Decay Rates were the metrics the older Players feared most; they were the harbingers of reduced playing minutes and the early warning of an end to their career. All through the morning, we built up our Strength, Speed, Conditioning and Agility ratings.

A few of us threw up in the gym, I said.

You threw up? she laughed.

I did, I said pretending to hang my head in shame. It was truly spewsome. After the last set of sprints.

She smiled at me and shook her head, That’s not a word babe. Spewsome, she giggled.

There must have been about thirty prospective Players working around the gym setup. A few looked very young, maybe at their first Assessment Centre. Some of the guys were on In-Reserve contracts, paid tens of millions of euros a year to basically not play for anyone else and be available if required. I saw one of them drop a couple of hundred-kilo weights on his chest late in the morning and disappear on a stretcher. Overnight, the Club would whittle us down to fourteen Contracted Players and we would do this all again in two-weeks’ time at the Federation’s Assessment Centre, where our Player Ratings for the season would be determined.

The morning went pretty well, I told Miranda. I’d say maybe five per cent up on a year ago, across the Board.

I’d had a metre running in my head all morning, translating my weights, times and distances into Rating Points. I had a good idea where I stood.

Five points up should be more than good enough to get my contract renewed.

And the afternoon? she asked, still looking happy and not the least bit anxious.

One of the things I love about the Game is that on the one hand you have to be able to score the raw points for speed, strength and the rest, while on the other you have to be able to play with the ball, amidst the chaos of a game played on the grass. This is what we did after a