Chasing a Rugby Dream, Book Two, page 5
He reached inside his crumpled backpack and rummaged around for what he needed. He found it quickly and pulled it out. It was his inhaler. Jimmy took two enormous gulps and felt the airways in his chest loosen immediately. He stood in front of his bedroom mirror and sucked in a huge gulp of air until his lungs filled. It made his chest stick out as if he’d been on the weights for a fortnight. I wish, thought Jimmy to himself.
Then he opened the door of his wardrobe, reached down for his battered old Rhino rugby ball at the bottom, and squeezed it tight. It wasn’t fully pumped up, but only gave slightly as he gripped it. ‘That’ll do,’ he whispered. He didn’t want to waste any time having to go to the shed to find his pump, he just wanted to get outside and run.
He swept his boots up off the bed, skipped down the stairs and then into the short hallway to the front door, nearly bumping into his mum as she came out of the front room.
‘Where are you going now? I’m just putting some food on for tea, it’s shepherd’s pie.’
‘Oh, don’t worry about me, Mum,’ replied Jimmy, ‘I’m just going down to The Rec for a bit, I’ll have it after . . . I had food earlier at the Academy.’ Yet another lie. Jimmy wasn’t proud of himself.
‘Oh, Jimmy, why didn’t you tell me? I’ve got things on the cooker now!’
But Jimmy didn’t hear a word. He was off, out of the door, and running the well-trodden path to his favourite place.
The Rec.
KICK CHASE
Jimmy tightened his lace as best he could, but without putting too much pressure on it in case he snapped it. He moved his foot about inside the boot as he stood up, to see if the lace would hold firm. It did.
Then, sliding his right boot under the ball, he flicked it up in front of him, caught it, and remembering everything he’d been taught last season by Peter Clement and Liam Wyatt of the Wolves, he rolled the ball out of his hand, arm outstretched in front of him. He leaned slightly into the kick, before drilling it as high and as far in front of him as he was able, following through with his leg as high as he could manage.
If he was doing his kicking training drills, he would’ve just stood there, admiring his kick as it swirled through the air like a torpedo. But not today.
From the moment the ball left his boot, Jimmy was off. And what a sight it was. That’s if anyone had been on the empty Rec to see it.
The speed Jimmy was able to generate from a standing start was quite remarkable. It was one of his many rugby strengths.
Not even looking at the ball, Jimmy covered the first ten metres in an instant. He’d taken a deep breath the moment he’d made the kick and didn’t take another until he was twenty metres into his run. He reached top speed with ease. This was no accident. Jimmy had tinkered with his running style for a long time. For a while, he had tried to copy the style of Wales’ George North. Jimmy loved watching North, who was all strength, his arms and legs popping like pistons with every stride, covering the ground with almost unstoppable speed and power. But when he copied the Welshman, Jimmy realised he simply didn’t have the strength and physique required to run like him. He always felt that he was putting too much effort in without gaining any extra reward – speed.
So, recently, Jimmy had been watching YouTube clips of someone he felt was the most natural and easy-running of the top stars currently playing: Beauden Barrett of New Zealand. He didn’t have the all-action style of somebody like North, but whatever Barrett did, it seemed all his energy went into his speed. And that’s what Jimmy had managed to achieve. He just wished he’d had the opportunity to show it at the Eagles camp.
After twenty metres, Jimmy looked up at the ball for the first time. He’d struck it too well. He’d really wanted to jump and challenge for it in the air, the way that Liam Williams did so regularly for Wales and the British and Irish Lions, but he’d just kicked the ball too far. Instead, Jimmy bust an absolute gut to get to it before its second bounce.
In Jimmy’s mind, he was no longer on The Rec. Now, he was out in South Africa on a Lions tour, on one of their rock hard pitches that suited fast, flowing rugby so well. Even if he had been at a packed Ellis Park, full to its 62,567 capacity, he wouldn’t have heard a sound. His focus was purely and utterly on the ball. Jimmy was flying at full tilt now, imagining that South Africa’s Cheslin Kolbe was charging at the ball, having come in off his wing to catch and call for a mark.
If anything, after Jimmy’s initial lightning burst over twenty metres, he got quicker over the next twenty. Not taking his eyes off the ball, Jimmy arrived just as it hit the earth with a thud, throwing up some dust from the bone dry Rec pitch. Some players would have hesitated at this point and waited to see the ball bounce skywards, before it dropped down again. Not Jimmy. He gambled.
Arriving at absolute top speed, he guessed that the ball was going to land on its flat side and just bounce straight upwards, not right or left, or forward or back, just straight up. He was right.
His chest smashed into the ball a split second before he wrapped his arms around it, smothering it tight to his body, ensuring there would be no knock on. Straight in the bread basket. Then, in his imaginary world, Jimmy moved to his left before instantly stepping to his right, sitting Kolbe down on his backside. Continuing at top speed, Jimmy headed for the posts and dotted the ball down.
Normally, Jimmy would’ve allowed himself a smile, done a dab or a stupid dance and basked in the fantasy that he’d just scored the winning try in a Lions Test series. But not today.
Instead, he just turned around, steadied himself under the posts, took another deep breath, and repeated the kick and the chase again. And again. And again.
He did it fifteen times before he collapsed under the far posts, sweating like a steel worker at the blast furnace and breathing as heavily as a steam train travelling at top speed. He was glad he had taken a few slugs of his inhaler before coming out.
It had been great to run. Really great. He’d missed it so much. The happy bonus to that was that he hadn’t given tackling a single moment’s thought.
That felt even better.
TIME TO TALK
Jimmy felt better than he had for days. He’d done what he needed to do, blast away all the negative thoughts around tackling by doing what he did best – running, kicking and catching. It seemed like all his woes from the Academy had been blown away by his intense running and chasing.
After taking off his boots, he began walking back across The Rec towards home and noticed someone else walking in the opposite direction. It was a boy around his own age. As they approached one another, Jimmy looked to see if he recognised him – but he didn’t. The boy was walking along looking at his phone and, every now and then, glancing around. As they closed in on each other, the boy looked up and saw Jimmy staring at him. He froze, then quickly changed direction, turning around and going back the way he’d come. Odd, thought Jimmy, and he paused for a moment so that the other boy didn’t feel like he was walking right behind him.
Over at the far corner of The Rec was the house owned by old Reggie Parry. Parry – as everyone called him – was always mending or repairing something, and true to form, he started up his circular saw to cut through some wood. It wasn’t overly loud, but as it fired into life, the boy almost jumped out of his skin. Then he shuffled on the spot for a moment, hands clasped over his ears, then he brought his head down into his chest, as if he was going to curl up in a ball. Parry must’ve seen the reaction the boy had to his saw, so stopped and called out to the boy to apologise for giving him a fright, but the boy didn’t seem to acknowledge Parry and instead ran off, his hands still clamped over his ears. ‘That was really odd,’ whispered Jimmy to himself.
He was nearly home when he heard a familiar voice calling him.
‘Oi, oi, superstar, what are you doing here? I thought you’d be at the Academy for another week.’
It was Kitty.
Jimmy beamed for the first time in days. He finally had someone he could talk to.
He threw an underarm, one-handed spin pass to her, which she caught with ease and then spun on one finger.
‘Look at the state of you!’ she said. ‘You been running a marathon or something?’
‘Sprints,’ he replied, realising for the first time how much he was sweating. ‘But I think I’ve overdone it. I’m cream crackered!’
‘Lightweight!’ laughed Kitty, before tossing the ball back to Jimmy, who caught it one-handed to avoid dropping his boots.
‘Seriously though,’ she continued, ‘I wasn’t expecting you back for another week at least. What happened?’
Jimmy looked a bit sheepish. He thought about telling Kitty the same story he’d told Mr Withey and his mum, but he trusted Kitty more than just about anyone else. He took a deep breath.
‘It was hard, Kitty. Way harder than I expected.’
Kitty could sense that there was more he wanted to say, but she didn’t want to push him.
Looking down at the scruffy ball in his hands, she said, ‘Have you got to go back in now? Why don’t we go back on the grass and do some kicking and passing?’
‘No way, I’m done,’ he replied. ‘But why don’t we go to the swings for a while?’
‘Come on then,’ she said with a gentle smile, and they headed to the playground at the edge of The Rec.
Jimmy felt relaxed by the gentle motion of the swing and by the ease with which his conversations with Kitty always flowed. He paused for a moment and then said, ‘How do you cope with tackling?’
‘Tackling? You mean rugby tackling?’
‘Yeah,’ he replied, feeling slightly hesitant now that he’d brought the subject up.
‘I don’t know what you mean by “cope”,’ she said. ‘Do you mean, how do I do it?’
‘Well, yeah . . . Erm, no . . . Oh, I don’t know,’ he said, looking to the ground, his cheeks flushing a little.
‘Has this got something to do with the Academy?’
Jimmy nodded.
‘Mr Kane?’
Jimmy knew he could explain away his embarrassment by blaming Kane. Kitty disliked him almost as much as Jimmy did, but he decided to come clean.
‘Well, he wasn’t exactly a help, but no, it’s not about him, really. It’s about me.’
He looked up at Kitty for a moment before continuing.
‘Do you remember the Cluster Cup final?’
‘Remember it!’ laughed Kitty, ‘I’ll never forget it! It was the best day of my whole life! Apart from Ryan’s burp that is. And his fart in the dressing room too. He blamed Andrew Beasley, but it was definitely him! It was rank!’
Jimmy laughed out loud at the memory. It felt like he hadn’t laughed all summer.
‘No, that tackle,’ he said eventually. ‘Your tackle. On big Dale, their captain, in the first half.’
Kitty blushed. ‘Oh, that was nothing, I just got in the way.’
‘No, it was brilliant,’ he said, earnestly. ‘We didn’t know it then, but if you’d missed that tackle, he’d have scored and the way the game went, I don’t think we’d have got back in. Especially with the nightmare that Mike was having.’
Kitty said nothing, just smiled modestly at the memory.
‘The thing is, I remember every moment of that tackle – and all the others you pulled off during the season. And when you did them, I know they were always brilliant, but they all looked, well, kind of normal, if you know what I mean?’
The puzzled look on Kitty’s face showed that she didn’t know what Jimmy meant.
‘What I mean, is that if it had been me on the wing at that moment, I’d have tackled big Dale too. It’s just what we do as rugby players.’
‘Exactly!’ replied Kitty, ‘and that’s why I get embarrassed when people talk about my tackles; they’re only tackles, anyone can do it.’
Jimmy paused.
‘That’s just the thing, Kitty, I don’t think I can anymore.’
A NEW KID IN TOWN
It was the most difficult conversation that Jimmy had ever had, and that was saying something. After his parents’ divorce, his issues with Mr Kane in school and having to speak to Mr Withey to leave the Eagles Academy, there had been many times Jimmy had needed to explain himself, but this was different. This felt like he was admitting to some sort of defeat. He found it hard.
Kitty, for the most part, just sat and listened to everything. The smack Jimmy had taken on the nose that first morning that saw him have his first ever HIA, how Kane had just used him for tackling and nothing else and how the constant impacts, clashes and bangs Jimmy received had really got into his head. There was only one awkward moment for Jimmy and that was when, trying to emphasise just how much of a mental issue tackling had become for him, he said to Kitty, ‘I mean, I know I can do it, I just need to look at you, you’re a girl and even you can do it.’
Jimmy wished he could’ve taken his words back the moment they left his lips.
‘That’s right,’ replied Kitty coolly. ‘Even a girl can tackle, when really I should be inside, in my pink dress playing My Little Pony with all my Barbie dolls.’
Jimmy apologised at once. He’d made a clumsy comment and regretted it. If there was anyone who believed girls could do anything, it was Jimmy. The respect he had for his mum, the strength he saw in his younger sister, Julie, and how she’d handled their parents’ split and also the way she basically ran Jimmy and his brother Jonny’s daily lives for them, and of course Kitty. The girl he respected most. He wished he could’ve taken his words straight back.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he spluttered. ‘What I meant was, what you do isn’t normal.’ She raised an eyebrow and looked thunderous, so he quickly tried again. ‘For you to take the field against boys, some of them twice your size, isn’t something that many girls do. In fact, I can’t think of another girl who plays competitive rugby in our league. The point I was trying to make is, most people would assume tackling to be the weakest part of your game, and it’s clearly not. Apart from your speed, it’s your strongest asset. I just wondered how you’ve managed to cope with that?’
Kitty’s shrug told him that she had accepted his apology.
‘Honestly? I’ve never given it a moment’s thought,’ she said. ‘I remember telling your mum this before, but when my dad realised I was serious about rugby, he sat me down and told me not to expect anyone to go easy on me and then told me to really embrace and enjoy tackling as part of the game. Once he realised that I understood that, there was a period when he’d come home from the gym and we’d spend time in the garden, just tackling . . . and I really loved it. I think Dad’s support, and the way he really bought into what I wanted to do and gave me practical help, was important.’
Jimmy nodded dolefully. There was a time when he had not given tackling a second thought, but the battering he’d had as Kane’s cannon fodder had removed that feeling. And it had now been replaced with fear.
‘I honestly think this is a temporary thing, Jimmy,’ she continued. ‘That bang on the nose you got on the first day would have shaken anyone up. Then Kane trying to make you feel stupid just added to it. By the time the rugby season comes around, all this will be forgotten. Promise.’
Jimmy wanted to believe her, but something deep, deep inside him had changed. Tackling was now a serious issue for Jimmy and he had no idea how he was going to deal with it.
‘Ji-mmy!’ called a loud voice. It was his mum. Tea. He’d forgotten all about it.
‘I’d better go,’ he said, leaping off the swing. ‘My tea is probably burnt to a crisp!’
Kitty laughed. ‘You’ll have more to worry about than tackling if that’s the case!’
‘Man, you know it!’ laughed Jimmy.
As they walked, they both saw the boy that Jimmy had seen earlier. He was still looking at his phone before glancing around, and had moved to the opposite side of The Rec, far away from the sounds of Parry and his circular saw.
‘Who’s that?’ asked Jimmy, pointing over at the boy.
‘Oh, yeah, new family,’ replied Kitty. ‘Don’t know his name, but they’ve moved into one of the posh new-builds behind the allotments. He’ll be in our class when we go back in September.’
‘Oh, right. He seems a bit odd, doesn’t he? I saw him earlier get into a right state over by old Parry’s. It was only Parry cutting some wood with his saw, you’d have sworn a jet was taking off next to him!’ He laughed. ‘He needs to man-up, whoever he is!’
‘Oh, Jimmy, that’s not nice!’
‘What?’ protested Jimmy. ‘I’m only saying. Just seemed like it was a pretty over the top reaction to an old bloke cutting up some wood.’
‘He doesn’t like loud noises, Jimmy. He’s autistic.’
If Jimmy hadn’t thought he could feel any worse, he now did.
‘Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t know he had autism. Poor kid.’
‘First thing, he hasn’t got autism, he’s autistic – there’s a difference,’ said Kitty. ‘And poor nothing! My mum was telling me all about it. He just has a different take on the world to us, that’s all. He reacts to and deals with situations in a different way. No one way is right or wrong. My mum knows all about it from her job at the Education Department and she’s met his mum. She told me he doesn’t want to be treated differently to anyone or pitied, he just wants to fit in – like we all do. That shouldn’t be too hard, should it?’
Jimmy didn’t answer, but watched as the boy turned around and retraced his steps away from the playground and back towards The Rec, seemingly walking in a way where he considered every step he made.
‘All right,’ said Jimmy, ‘next time we see him, that’s what we’ll do. We’ll help him fit in. I wonder if he likes rugby?’
‘Jimmy Joseph, you’re obsessed!’
Jimmy laughed. ‘Well, I may not be able to tackle, but I’m still going to play! See you tomorrow, shorty.’
And with a little skip in his step, Jimmy was off, thinking of ways to avoid eating the dry and, no doubt, slightly burnt shepherd’s pie that awaited him at home.
