A Tough Half

The ball gets booted about a bunch for the first ten minutes or so, but you only need to make a couple safe passes to keep the match moving. You would say it’s been uneventful, but games like this are always on a knife’s edge, where even the tiniest difference could make a goal happen.

Jack has the ball now, and he’s bringing it up, looking for options. A Kale defender gets in close, forcing his decision, and he kicks it towards Daphne. It’s the wrong call, and done imperfectly—a Kale centreback manages to intercept it before Daphne has a chance to jockey for it, and all of a sudden she’s sprinting up with the ball, tapping it over to a midfielder when Khloe gets near.

The counterattack is ruthless. The two midfielders play the ball between them a series of short passes, easily circumventing Katie and then Mars, meaning that you have to drop away from Wright to stop their advance. With two people on the ball, it’s tricky for you to get the ball off either, but you cut in as you sprint in from the side, getting between them. It’s impossible for the one on the left to pass to the one on your right now, or you’d get the ball, and the midfielder on your right tries to break away from you, pushing for a little more speed, but you manage to keep up, and Valentine by this point is in position to make something happen with the midfielder on the left.

You draw closer to the one on the right, eyes flicking between the two of them, and see Valentine taking the ball off the left one. She runs a short distance with it, sees that Mars is open, and gets the ball to her, relieving the pressure.

You push up with the rest of the team, and the midfielder who you were tailing gives you a hard look before dropping back.

The ball’s coming your way again. There’s twenty-five minutes left on the clock, and the score is still tied 0-0. The midfielder on the right passes to Wright. He’s been doing that lots recently, and you’ve had to run down Wright more times than you can count.

You know the play’s coming, and so you’re already close enough to Wright to begin contesting the moment she makes her first touch. The Kale striker is good on her feet, and the ball is always just frustratingly out of your reach. You go for a tackle right as she gives the ball a quick tap to the side, and you almost trip, but you keep your footing—just.

It takes you a second to catch back up to her again, but a second is an awfully long time, and you can see her pulling her foot back, about to take the long shot. You hurl yourself at her, and get in the way just in time to feel the ball slam against your shins and bounce off to the side of the pitch.

Val, who was coming up from the side, gives you an appreciative pat on the back, and you jog off to the sidelines, picking up the ball for the throw-in.

It was a close call, but a saved ball is a saved ball.

You tackle the ball off of Wright, a quick kick sending the ball back towards the Kale goal. She doesn’t have a chance to pivot fast enough, and you’re running with the ball now. You start to look for someone to pass the ball to, but you realise there’s open space, and you push through it.

There’s a moment when you imagine running the ball all the way to the goal and scoring, but it’s a fanciful thing that you dismiss as you see the midfielder on the right. He’s big, fast, and most importantly, in the way. You start to look around for options, knowing you don’t quite have the energy and ball control necessary to beat him right now, and so you lock eyes with Khloe, passing the ball over to her.

The play goes off. Khloe takes a second to find an opening and sends the ball to Jack, but Kale has had time to react now, and closed off his options, so the ball goes back to Katie, and then bounces around the middle of the field for a while longer. Nothing ends up coming out of the play.

When the ref blows the whistle, wrapping up the game, it’s a tied game at zero apiece. It was tough to even maintain that, and you could imagine this game much worse had the day just been a little different. You shake hands with the Kale team, and head back to your side of the pitch, catching Charlie’s eye on the way. The man is stretching as he walks, arms folded up above his head.

“You ready for what’s coming next?” he asks, and the look you gave him must have been more than mildly astonished, because he bursts out laughing. “Oh, don’t worry. It’s not so bad when we don’t lose.”

The team has gathered around in a semicircle around Daphne once more.

“You all felt it today, I am sure. We came close to conceding a goal at some points. We should have won today,” Daphne says, and you realise that she is being utterly serious. You meet eyes with Val, whose eyes are wide in disbelief. You guys had barely held your own on the pitch today. And now Daphne’s saying that you should have won? “Many things went wrong today. We take moments like this to reflect and improve. I could tell you all what I think each of you should have done better, but I think it is better when it comes from yourself. Let’s start with you, Keegan.”

“I mean, I saved the balls,” he says, a little unsure of what’s expected of him here. Daphne continues to look at him expectantly, though, and so he pauses for a second, thinking. “I guess I could have avoided that corner if I’d been positioned better. Then maybe we’d have been able to get the next play going our way and made something happen.”

Daphne nods, and gestures to Charlie, who is ready with his part. “Our defence was a little shaky today, but I don’t think I was far off from where I wanted to be there. I should have been better on the counterattacks and tactics after their offences, because that’s where we really missed on our opportunities."

The team turns to you. “It’s like Charlie said. I should have been on the lookout for more proactive plays after taking back possession. That pass at the end might have been a goal.” You see nods from all around. It was a missed opportunity.

The team continues going around the circle, each person identifying the things that they could have improved. When Daphne wraps it up, pointing out the chances she could have made rather than the shots she took that got saved, she gives the team a nod.

“It wasn’t a bad performance, but I’m expecting better,” she says. “I’ll see you all on Monday for training.”

With that, the group breaks apart, and you head into the locker room to shower and get changed back into your regular clothes. Not much talking happens in the locker room. Most people, including you, are caught in their own heads, replaying the match, figuring out what they could have done. The key moments of the match flash in your head over and over again, and when you emerge from the shower stalls, you’re determined that you’re going to be better than you were today in the future.

Back out on the pitch, you catch the eye of the Kale striker. Her gaze lingers on you for a second, and you wonder if you should approach her—but then again, you’d also agreed on lunch with Jack, Helen, and Mal to talk over the econ homework.