The coach was upbeat.

  ‘Don’t worry about them,’ he said, pulling the boys in close. ‘We haven’t played great, but we’re not that far behind.’ He gave each of his defenders a high five and patted the midfield group on the tops of their heads. He then clapped his hands to get his players’ attention. Joel felt awestruck. He’d been in the huddle before, but now he was in there as a player. Even if he hadn’t taken the field yet. It was so exciting.

  ‘We’re not running in support. We’re dropping our heads. We’re thinking too much about a big lug running around with pointy elbows, and not enough about our own game.’

  A few of the kids continued to complain about Kransky.

  ‘No, no,’ Coach Heath said, shaking his head. ‘We don’t speak about him again for the rest of the match. We only speak about us.’

  Coach Heath was really positive. If he was worried that they were behind, he didn’t show it. He shuffled a few magnets and announced some positional changes. Adam was still centre half-back. Troy centre half-forward. Joel stepped back, letting his teammates check for their new positions. He looked down at his boots. He was worried about the rest of the game. What if —

  He felt a hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Joel.’

  He looked up to see Coach Heath looking strangely at him.

  ‘Yes, Coach?’ Joel replied, suddenly nervous. Had he done something wrong?

  ‘You need to check the board,’ Coach Heath said.

  Joel didn’t understand at first. ‘Why —’ he began, only to stop mid-sentence. He dashed forward, his heart pounding.

  It couldn’t be . . .

  But there, out on the wing, written in texta on the whiteboard because the coach didn’t have a magnet — there it was in all its scribbled glory.

  J. Selwood.

  Coach Heath patted him on the back. ‘First game, Joel, and it’s going to be a tough one. It’s going to be a battle royale. And you’ve got that whole outer wing. Stay wide.’ He turned to the team, ‘And use him, boys. The word is he’s got superb skills.’

  Joel smiled. If there was one thing he knew about, it was a battle royale . . .

  FIFTEEN

  Joel ran onto the field, his legs feeling like jelly. He ran a lap of the square in a daze, touching the ground to stretch his hamstrings. This was it. This was actually it. One of the dads was boundary umpire now, standing for the restart where Joel had stood all season. Joel jogged to the wing, and couldn’t help looking around for his mum and dad. Could they see him? There! They were waving madly at him. He gave them a quick smile and pulled his attention back to the game.

  For the first five minutes of the second quarter, Joel sprinted up and down the wing, almost like he was still running the boundary. Kransky was smashing it out of the ruck, and the Swallows’ midfielders were getting first use. They kicked the opening two goals of the quarter. It might have been more if Adam hadn’t saved the day twice. Joel felt his heart thumping almost in his neck. He was short of breath, and his legs were burning.

  ‘Get in there, Joely.’ He heard Scott’s tiny voice float across from the boundary. Joel wished he could. He longed to crash his way into the centre bounce, to join the onballers in the thick of it, but the coach had told him to stay wide. And he kept yelling out instructions.

  ‘Good position, Joel. Giving us an outside option there. Use him, boys, use him!’

  But they didn’t use him. Five minutes became ten minutes. Joel just ran and ran and ran, calling for the ball at the top of his voice, never getting a kick.

  He saw his mum and dad standing next to Scott. When they caught his eye, they waved excitedly. They didn’t seem to mind that he was struggling for a touch.

  His only chance for a possession came towards the end of the quarter. Adam dodged around three tacklers and pumped it wide to Joel. But the ball bounced on its end and away from him, then out of bounds.

  ‘Give it to the wee little Smellwood to throw in,’ Kransky teased, as he locked arms with the ruckman. ‘He was never a great boundary umpire. But since he hasn’t had a kick, maybe boundary umpiring is what he’s best at?’

  Joel felt a surge of anger and adrenaline. He was not going back to boundary umpiring. He was a player now. And he was going to play.

  He watched his replacement boundary umpire, a dad named Tony, toss the ball high into play. It merged into the hazy disc of the winter sun.

  Third man up, Joel told himself. I’ll jump high and pluck it off the pack, then roost it forward. He made perfect position. The ball drifted on. Joel leapt in the air.

  ‘Yooooooooooooow!’

  His knee went right into Kransky’s buttock. Joel just hadn’t anticipated how big the boy mountain was. Kransky collapsed with the corky, yelling in pain.

  ‘Free kick, Raywood Swallows,’ the umpire called, blowing his whistle. ‘In the back.’

  Kransky rolled over, clearly in agony.

  ‘You’re dead,’ he snarled, when he finally got to his feet to take his kick. ‘You’ve made a very serious mistake, dude. You’re cactus.’

  Joel didn’t say anything. Kransky had been hurting the Sharks players all day. He was a bully. He was a brute. Joel might have only come up to his ribcage, but he didn’t retreat. He stood tall. He looked Kransky in the eye.

  Kransky poked a finger into Joel’s chest. ‘You’re. Dead.’

  ‘It was an accident,’ Joel said.

  ‘Just like it’ll be an accident when I get you back,’ Kransky replied.

  Kransky’s next victim was Nick Dal Santo.

  Nick had been the Sharks’ best player for nearly three-quarters of the game. He dominated after half-time and found Troy twice to get the Sharks back to within two goals.

  Nick was unstoppable — reading every tap, breaking tackles, dancing out of trouble.

  Kransky ‘fixed’ the problem by stomping on Nick’s ankle.

  The umpire didn’t see it. Kransky was too sneaky to do it out in the open. He waited until Nick was lifting himself off the ground with bodies all around him. Nick howled in pain.

  ‘I think he’s broken it!’ Troy cried. ‘Look at the stomp marks! He did it on purpose! That kid’s a cheat and should be off the ground.’

  The umpire walked up to Kransky and waved a finger. ‘Now, none of that. If I see any more of that . . .’

  ‘What?’ Kransky said, eyes wide like an innocent lamb. ‘What? I didn’t do nothin’.’

  Nick’s ankle was on ice at three-quarter time. He wanted to try to come back on, but the coach wasn’t keen. ‘We’ll need you for finals, Nick. I’m gonna give you a rest.’

  The magnets shuffled and the boys peered at the whiteboard to see who would be thrown into the centre square against the rampaging Kransky.

  Coach Heath hesitated. He seemed confused about which move to make.

  ‘Move Joel in there,’ Troy said quietly.

  ‘Your brother?’ the coach said in surprise. ‘It’s pretty willing in there today. He’s only a little tacker.’

  ‘He’s unbelievable,’ Troy said.

  ‘Phenomenal,’ Adam added.

  ‘He’s the best playground footballer for his age that any of us have ever seen.’ Troy had his hands on his hips, staring intently at the coach. Joel looked from twin to twin, waiting for the joke, but it didn’t come. They were actually being serious. They were giving their honest opinions. He felt a bright flush spread across his face. He hadn’t kicked the ball yet.

  ‘Put him in the guts?’ Coach Heath still wasn’t convinced. ‘With Kransky doing what he’s doing?’

  ‘Just put him in there,’ Adam nodded, ‘and watch him go.’

  SIXTEEN

  The umpire raised the ball aloft. The siren sounded to begin the last quarter.

  Joel barely heard Leo Kransky say his little jibe about ‘squashing the mosquito’. A magnificent calm had descended. For two quarters he’d fretted as he ran up and down that wing, waiting for the ball to come out. Now it was up to Joel.

  He’d waited his whole life for this moment.

  The ball rose into the air, and the ruckmen grunted as they slammed together, nullifying one another. Joel wasn’t so much a mosquito as a buzzard. He tracked the ball through the tiniest of gaps in the pack and emerged on the other side, ball hugged to his chest. He was running at full pace.

  Even Joel wasn’t quite sure how he’d done it. He’d just rolled his body at the point of impact and bounced into the clear.

  ‘Joel! Joel! Joel!’

  Troy was charging out from full-forward, having left his defender a few metres behind.

  Joel slotted the ball onto his right foot and stabbed it into his brother’s path. Troy barely broke stride and took the mark out in front.

  There was an admiring ‘ooooooh’ from the grandstands. It was the sort of explosive clearance you expected to see in the big league, not the Under 12s.

  Troy booted the goal, bringing the Sharks back to within twelve points. ‘Great play, Joely,’ he said with a grin.

  Kransky glared at Joel at the restart. ‘You got lucky once, Smellwood. It won’t happen again.’

  Joel was oblivious. He clenched his jaw and narrowed his eyes. This time he read it off Kransky’s palm and was halfway to the line of the square before anyone realised what had happened.

  It was a brilliant quarter of football. Adam held up defence. Troy booted goal after goal. Joel hurled his tiny body into the tightest spots, winning the ball, seemingly at will.

  The Sharks kicked six goals in twenty minutes. They went from eighteen points down to twenty-one points up in the blink of an eye. After ten possessions in as many minutes, the message came out to Joel. ‘Have a rest in the forward pocket, Joel. You’ve earned it. You’ve won this for us. See if you can snag a goal.’

  In that moment, Joel didn’t feel like he was a foot shorter than everybody else. Joel felt like a giant.

  As he went to jog forward, Kransky arrived in his face. His lips were pulled into a bulldog snarl. He was so angry that spit was foaming on the outside of his mouthguard.

  ‘Stretcher,’ he said, thrusting a finger in Joel’s chest. ‘Stretcher! You!’

  Joel felt a flutter of apprehension, but then remembered where he was, what he was doing. This was his game, his calling. It didn’t matter what people said to him out here. He just had to stay in his footy groove. He jogged calmly away.

  ‘Stretcher!’ Kransky screeched.

  Maybe it was fate, maybe it was something else. Certainly Joel didn’t mean for it to happen. He was just going for the ball. But two minutes later, with Joel still resting in the pocket, the ball floated into the Sharks’ forward line. It was a high, awkwardly spinning floater.

  Joel could see that the pack had got it wrong. He’d boundary umpired this side many times, and he knew this wind. He moved to the back of the pack, ready for the crumb. But then he changed his mind. The ball was hanging there, so invitingly. The pack was almost daring him to climb.

  Joel ran forward and leapt.

  He jumped early and felt the thrill of a ride. But then the momentum of the pack moved back and pushed him up further still, and it was suddenly enormous. He hung there, a tiny speck at the top of a mountain of players.

  The ball found him more than he found the ball. As Joel crashed to the ground, he heard the gasp of the crowd and the groan of those underneath him.

  ‘Joooooooely!’ Troy laughed, running up. ‘Mark of the year!’

  All around he could see his teammates grinning. Even the Swallows players had smiles on their faces. The whole ground was celebrating, all except one person.

  ‘Someone hit me!’ Kransky said groggily. ‘Someone clocked me in the back of the head.’

  ‘It was a mark,’ Troy said. ‘You were Joel’s launching pad.’

  Kransky went down on his haunches. ‘I don’t feel so good,’ he said. A few of Kransky’s teammates were waving their arms. ‘Stretcher!’ one yelled. ‘Kransky’s not feeling great.’

  A stretcher came out and carried Kransky from the field. Joel saw him rubbing his head and he felt a tiny bit bad. He really hadn’t meant it. Screamers were never any fun for the people standing in the pack, but they were a fair and spectacular part of footy.

  He watched the stretcher make its way slowly off the field. Kransky sat up in time to shake his fist at Scott, who wasn’t doing or saying anything. Joel stopped feeling bad. Kransky was still well enough to be Kransky.

  ‘Okay, Joel, take your kick,’ the umpire said, tossing him the ball.

  That was one thing about having been a boundary umpire. The field umpires knew your name.

  Troy tossed the ball back to Joel and he lined up his shot. Fifteen metres out, directly in front. He’d taken the mark. Now he just had to kick the goal. His first-ever goal.

  How good was footy!

  He couldn’t wait to get to school on Monday to tell his friends about the mark.

  He wasn’t Boundary Boy anymore. He was a player.

  From now on, he would demand a different wrestling name on the trampoline.

  He wondered if they’d have a Selwood Battle Royale after the game.

  He began to walk in.

  He saw Scott running to the area behind the goals.

  Scott was eating something, possibly a killer python.

  A group of kids were still clapping. Cheering his mark!

  How good was footy! How much fun was actually playing a game of footy! For real!

  Joel walked in, his head full of the wonderfulness of it all.

  Perhaps his head was too full of the wonderfulness of it all. Joel sprayed the ball at forty-five degrees — out on the full.

  He bit his lip, but couldn’t stop smiling. It was the not-quite-perfect end to a perfect day.

  ONE

  1997

  ‘Joel and Fish are captains!’

  ‘Pick me, Joel!’

  ‘Sel! Sel! Sel! Pick me!’

  The bell had sounded for lunchtime and Mr Cunningham’s grade fours were streaming onto ‘Big Oval’ at Bendigo Catholic Primary School. Big Oval was neither big nor an oval. Instead, it was a poky, out-of-shape rectangle, with a cyclone fence around three sides. It had patchy grass, which was getting patchier as the drought in Bendigo and Central Victoria bit harder.

  The boys didn’t care about the shape of Big Oval or the state of the grass. They just wanted to play footy. They played footy every recess and every lunchtime. From March to October.

  Joel was always one of the lunchtime captains. He didn’t particularly want it that way. Sometimes he’d say, ‘Don’t make me captain, give somebody else a go.’ The new captains would then fight over who got first pick to have Joel on their team. Eventually, they agreed that Joel and the year level’s second-best footballer, Charlie Fishburne, should be permanent captains.

  Everyone called Charlie ‘Fish’. He was shorter than Joel, but he moved so fast he was almost impossible to tackle. He was Aboriginal, and his favourite player was St Kilda’s Nicky Winmar. ‘He’s a brother,’ Fish would say, and it took a long time for Joel and the rest of grade four to understand that Winmar wasn’t actually Fish’s brother. What Fish meant was that he felt a bond because Winmar was Aboriginal, too.

  Fish got to pick first. The grade fours thought this was fairer, because Joel got to have Joel on his team.

  Joel loved lunchtime footy but hated the picking-teams part. He usually picked Lewis first, because Lewis had been his best friend since prep and was a decent player. But it was a brutal process, a bunfight. Kids would squeal to be picked, and those already picked shout-whispered embarrassing and sometimes mean opinions on who should be taken next.

  ‘Not Reuben — his skills are terrible!’

  ‘Sel! Sel! Don’t get Pooch! Remember Friday lunch? He cost us the game!’

  Fish also picked kids one by one, from best to worst. He had the unfortunate habit of taking forever with each decision. He’d point his finger at a hopeful kid and say, ‘I’ll take . . . um . . .’ And then he would change his mind and choose somebody else. For Fish, lunchtime footy was full-on.

  It took a serious footy nut to wear a mouthguard to lunchtime footy. Fish was that nut. He wore his mouthguard, which was in the black, yellow and red of the Aboriginal flag, every time. He was a ferocious opponent but also a great teammate of Joel’s at Strathdale Sharks Under 10s.

  ‘You’re going down, Selwood,’ Fish would say, every day.

  ‘Yeah, just like yesterday,’ Joel would reply.

  ‘Yeah, well, today you are.’

  ‘Yeah, well, we’ll see.’

  Like everyone, Fish knew how good Joel was. Joel was worth about three players. If Fish’s team snagged a win, if they beat the mighty Selwood, it was trumpeted like an AFL premiership.

  Joel liked winning, too. After grabbing Lewis, he picked the next best in the line. Sometimes he’d feel bad for the kids who never got picked early. They would look at the ground, their faces sad. But when he would go to pick them, the others on Team Selwood would start stirring.

  ‘What are you doing, Sel? Harry W is still there!’

  ‘Hamish can’t even handball properly. Don’t let Fish’s team win!’

  There was one kid who never begged. As bad as Hamish and Wayno and Oliver and Percy were, they were never the absolutely last kid picked.

  That’s because there was always Ray.

  Ray d’Cruz was last picked, every day. He was tiny and skinny-armed and not much bigger than a grade one. His legs were like matchsticks, barely thicker than Joel’s arms. He hardly spoke, and when he did speak, his voice was quiet and slightly slurred. And he ran awkwardly, sort of like a soldier dragging an injured leg.

  For weeks Ray came down to Big Oval and just stood there, off to the side. Neither Joel nor Fish picked him, because they assumed he didn’t want to play, or wasn’t fit to play. Surely he’s too small, Joel thought. He’d say if he wanted to join in. He must just like watching.

 

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