Sleepover Club Goes For Goal!

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There was a great clatter as the doors from the boys’ changing room burst open and Ryan Scott and Danny McCloud stalked across the gym. They were pretending to be Gladiators. Pathetic! They were followed by a group of younger boys who were all looking at Ryan Scott as though he was Alan Shearer or something. I mean, come on! The boy looks more like Chuckie from Rugrats!

As soon as Ryan Scott saw me he asked angrily, “What’s she doing here?”

“I’ve come to show you a thing or two about football!” I snapped back.

“Yeah, right!” sneered Scotty-chops. “Don’t you think we should see if she knows how to kick the ball, sir? She’s only going to slow us down if she can’t, and that wouldn’t be fair!”

(You see – Ryan Scott and Fliss do have a lot in common! Fliss is always going on about things being ‘fair’.)

Before Mr Pownall could answer, Danny McCloud had tossed a football towards me.

“I’ll show them!” I told myself, and started heading the ball, keeping it up in the air as long as I could. Then I took it on my knee and bounced it from one knee to the other without letting it touch the ground. Then – and this is the clever bit – I trapped the ball on my foot and flicked it on to my knee and kept doing that until Ryan Scott got so mad that he snatched the ball away from me. The others kids broke into applause, and old Scotty looked so mad I thought he might explode.

“That’s easy to do!” he snapped. “I bet you can’t pass it properly though, can you?”

I was just about to prove that my passing skills were as deadly as David Beckham’s, when Mr Pownall grabbed the football.

“That was very impressive Kenny,” he said. “But I’m afraid heading skills won’t be of any use to you in five-a-side football.”

We all looked blankly at him.

“You see this really is a game of FOOTball. If anyone kicks the ball over head height, it automatically means that a free kick is awarded to the other team.”

I must admit that I’d always thought that five-a-side football was exactly the same as the eleven-a-side variety, but with fewer people on the team obviously. WRONG! Mr Pownall explained that it’s a different game entirely.

“When the ball goes over the touchline, a player from the other team doesn’t THROW it in, they have to ROLL it in,” he explained. “And corners are rolled in too.”

“But you do score the same, don’t you sir?” asked Danny McCloud, who was beginning to look a bit confused.

“Well, yes and no,” replied Mr Pownall. “The object of the game is still to get the ball in the back of the net, but you can only score from outside the area. There are no delicate tap-ins with five-a-side!”

We’d been standing around quite a bit, and I think Mr Pownall sensed that we were eager to get on and play.

“Right we’ll discuss the rules of the game as we go along. Let’s get warmed up first!” he said.

We jogged round, and when we were warm enough we stretched out. Then Mr Pownall divided us into groups. He lined up some cones, and first we had to run through them and back to our team, then we had to dribble a ball through them. Ryan Scott was in my team, worse luck, so he never stopped trying to wind me up.

“You think you’re so clever, don’t you?” he muttered when I was waiting for my turn. “Beginners’ luck! Just wait until we play a proper game – then you’ll see how it’s really done!”

“Yeah right!” I hissed back. “Like I’ll be impressed by you! I’ve seen you playing football in the playground, don’t forget. I’ve seen better skills from my mate’s dog!”

Ryan Scott was not a happy boy! I think Mr Pownall sensed that we weren’t exactly the best of friends, so he made us all swap teams for the next exercises and made sure that Ryan and I were on different ones. Actually, that was cool because it meant that we were racing against each other. We did this thing where you had to dribble the ball around various obstacles, then shoot at goal. I’m so used to doing that kind of thing in the garden that it was a piece of cake and I scored every time. Old Scotty kept getting freaked when he saw me and shot his ball over the goal every time. It caught Mr Pownall right in the face once which was kind of funny, although we didn’t know whether we should laugh or not.

Danny McCloud was on my team, and you could tell that he was kind of impressed by the way I could play football. Although of course he’s a boy, so he found it really hard to admit it. It was only when our team came first in all the exercises that he got a bit carried away and said: “Hey McKenzie you’re quite good!” before adding, “… for a girl!”

The time just whizzed past. I couldn’t believe it when Mr Pownall said that the hour was almost up. We just had ten minutes left, and he said that we could have a go at playing a proper five-a-side game, just to get the feel of it. There were nine of us at the practice so he said that he’d make up the numbers.

“Right Kenny and Ryan, you can pick the teams. You first, Kenny”

I love picking teams. I looked at the faces in front of me, all looking eager – and desperate not to be the one left until the end. But you’ll never guess who was looking most eager of all and jumping around going:

“Kenny, pick me, pick me!”

Danny McCloud, that’s who! I mean, that’s not cool from someone of his age, now is it? But still, I felt kind of chuffed. I mean, he wanted to come on my team rather than on his best mate Ryan’s! I would have picked him anyway just to wind old Scotty-chops up. But he actually wanted to be on my team. Boy, did Ryan look MAD!

After we’d picked the teams we didn’t have time for much of a game. But I did have time to do this blinding run, skipping over a tackle from Scotty before passing the ball to Danny who shot it into the back of the net. Usually in that situation I’d go ballistic and do some crazy celebration. But this time was different. I mean, did I really want to fling my arms around Danny McCloud in order to celebrate the goal? I think not! That’s when it hit me that this school five-a-side thing with only boys for company might have a few drawbacks. I really had to get my mates interested. But that was going to be easier said than done – as I was about to find out!

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After that first five-a-side football practice, everything suddenly got very complicated. You see, I was suddenly in demand! You could have knocked me down with a feather when as soon as I got into the playground on Thursday morning, Danny McCloud shouted out:

“Oi, McKenzie! Fancy a game?”

He was holding up a football and was with a couple of the other guys in our class.

Now, that kind of thing doesn’t happen every day. I know that boys would never say it straight out, but this was like them admitting that they thought I was good at football.

I did look round to see if Frankie or the others were there before I joined in, I really did. But they weren’t. So of course I went over to play footie. Bad move! The others went ballistic with me when I finally caught up with them in the classroom.

“We always meet up before the start of school,” Fliss kept whingeing, like I’d just poisoned her goldfish or something.

“I expect you’ll be dropping us at break times now as well!” sniffed Frankie as soon as I’d sat down.

“Yeah, and playing with your new boyfriends,” added Rosie.

“They are not my boyfriends,” I told them angrily.

And to be honest, I didn’t think I’d be asked to play with the boys again anyway, because when Ryan Scott had turned up he didn’t exactly seem thrilled that I was playing football with his mates.

Sure enough, when lunchtime came, all the boys went to play football and walked past me as though I wasn’t even there. Except for Danny McCloud. He just shrugged his shoulders like he was apologising or something.

“Looks like they were just using you after all!” sneered Fliss with a told-you-so smirk plastered all over her face.

“Well, maybe I was using them to kill time until you lot turned up!” I snapped back at her.

“You didn’t exactly notice us when we did appear!” moaned Rosie.

“Yeah, well, I’m sorry about that. You know what it’s like when you’re busy playing something.”

“You mean you’d rather play with the boys than play with us!” Fliss exploded. “Well that’s charming, isn’t it?”

“Shut up for goodness sake!” I yelled. “They were playing football and I just happened to join in. That’s not a crime, is it?”

“Oooh, get her!” the others piped up.

“Chill out Kenny, for goodness sake!” laughed Frankie.

“Yeah, chill out!” shrieked Lyndz and Rosie together. They ran up behind me and started to tickle me all over. In seconds I was writhing in a heap on the ground with tears streaming down my face.

“I’m going to get you for this!” I eventually managed to gasp.

“Oh yeah?” giggled Rosie. “Prove it.”

I struggled up from the ground and managed to grab hold of Fliss. I bundled into her and started barging her over to the grass outside our classroom. She was dead scared at first, you could tell, but then she realised I was playing one of our Gladiator games and started to barge me back. Just when I thought I’d got the upper hand, Frankie grabbed hold of my arm. She spun me round faster and faster like one of those crazy fairground rides. It was wicked! When our legs finally gave way we collapsed in a heap on the ground.

“Now come on Kenny, admit it!” she gasped when she’d got her breath back. “You have much more fun with us than with some stupid boys, don’t you?”

“Yeah, sure!” I agreed, but inside I was still feeling kind of annoyed. I mean, I was getting all this earache about one little kick-around. It was like the others thought they owned me or something. And besides, if they’d bothered to come along to the five-a-side practice with me in the first place, they could have joined in with the footie too. Then they might not have been so jealous.

I was still feeling pretty annoyed with them by afternoon break. So when Danny McCloud came over and asked if I wanted to join in their football game, I leapt at the chance. You ought to have seen the others’ faces. I swear that Fliss could have swallowed a bus, her mouth was so wide open. Ryan Scott wasn’t too thrilled about it either, but one of the other boys had had to go home with a bad stomach ache so he really didn’t have much choice.

It was well cool. You see, it was great to be actually playing football with someone. Usually I have to practice my skills by myself in the garden. Molly the Monster, my stupid sister, wouldn’t be seen dead playing football. Neither would Emma my eldest sister, and Mum and Dad are just too busy.

I had a great time. Even Ryan Scott wasn’t too bad after a while. He’s a totally different person when he’s playing football – he’s almost normal. But of course my friends weren’t happy at all. They kept trying to make out that if I liked them so much I shouldn’t really need to play football as well. Crazy.

Anyway, from then on I tried a sort of compromise. I played football with the boys during morning and afternoon breaks, and stayed with my mates at lunchtime. But they were still mad at me. Especially as the more I played football and the more I went to the five-a-side practices, the more I found that I was sharing jokes with the boys in class. And of course the others couldn’t join in. I felt bad, I really did, but I must admit that I was enjoying myself too. I know that it’s not going to sound too good admitting this, but it felt great to be so popular with the boys. I could more than hold my own in their rough games and they sort of respected me for that. I think they accepted me as one of them, which was great because any of my friends will tell you what a tomboy I am.