"Nicholas Royle - The Cast" - читать интересную книгу автора (Royle Nicholas)

blues." But Docs lost the ball and as red shirts bore down on my goal he
hared after them, eager to make up for his error. There was a tough
scramble in which I slid at the feet of two attackers and narrowly missed
grabbing the ball. Docs fielded it safely back to me and I hit him on the
back, panting for breath. "Great stuff," I said and rolled the ball out to
Mike who took it up the wing.
We swapped ends at half time with the score standing at nil-nil, almost
unprecedented for us, and we congratulated ourselves. In the team talk we
said things like "We've got to push up more and get some good crosses in
for Tommo" and "We need to run with it more and hit more first time
balls". I pointed out that whenever I took a goalkick the only people
moving for it were in red shirts. "You mustn't expect the ball always to
come to you," I said. They nodded. I knew it would make no difference but
you had to say these things: it was a sort of convention that made us feel
like a football team.
Usually immediately after half time you find out one of the teams has
raised the pitch of their game as if their oranges had been stuffed with
steroids, and when we're playing, it's always the other team. Only this
time it was us who picked our game up and took it to the opposition. We
fought and we pushed forward, we didn't give up when we lost the ball. On
the break they got in a couple of decent shots which I stopped easily. We
looked like a team who knew what they were doing and I think we all felt
that it would bear fruit if we kept it up. We communicated, we passed into
space, we started runs from deep positions and with about a quarter of an
hour to go we scored.
What can I say? Think of the excitement when Geoff Hurst scored the
winning goal at Wembley in 1966. We were euphoric. Never before had we
gone ahead from nil-nil. We shouted praise and exhortations to each other
not to lose the advantage. I even saw Zsa jumping up and down on the touch
line. "Who scored?" she wanted to know.
"Docs," I said. Yes, it was Docs. He'd gone up for a corner and when the
ball curled out he slotted it home with great panache.
The pressure was really on me now. There was a danger that we would become
complacent, unaccustomed as we were to being a goal ahead. Within minutes
they slipped a long ball through our defence and I had to punch a good
cross away and concede a corner. They took a short one and their centre
forward tried a shot which again I could only deflect, but this time Docs
was on hand to tidy up.
About five minutes from time they were crowding round my penalty area
looking to get a cross in, keeping possession whenever our defenders tried
to take them on. They looked better than they had all game. One of them
made a short pass to a tall blond guy who earlier in the game had failed
to get on the end of a couple of crosses and suddenly I knew what he was
going to do. Out on the edge of the area he had a quick look round. There
was no one free of a marker. Even as he swung his leg back to take the
shot I imagined the trajectory of the ball, a gentle curve into the top
corner of the net, and me lying in a sorry heap in the mud.
He struck the ball and I knew this was my opportunity. The ball could only
have been in the air a second, two at the most, but from where I was
standing time stretched. This was it. I might never again have the same