The Corsa laboured up the valley road in second, the wipers going across the screen, squeak, chk, squeak, chk.
"Didn’t your Josh tell you?" he said, eyes on the road. "I’ve got the first team as well now. Took it over a fortnight back."
"And the kids?"
"And the kids. And the kit bags, and the cones, and the half-time tea." He counted them off the steering wheel with his thumb. "First team Mondays and Thursdays. Kids Sundays and Tuesdays. Welcome to my week."
"Who does the tea when you’re with the kids?"
"Stan’s wife." He said it like a man who had lost a long argument. "And she charges the club for the milk."
I looked across at the side of his face in the dark.
"Why me, Lommo?"
"Because I asked the chairman for somebody who can organise a back 4, and he said find one, and I only know 1 man who reads a pitch properly." He changed down for a bend. "And because you were cheap. Don’t tell him I said that."
"What happened to the last defensive coach?"
"There wasn’t a last one. Last season this lot let in 92 in the league. I’ve watched their tape from March, Matt. They defend like they’re queuing for a bus."
"What are they like?"
"Honest. Slow. They’ll run through a brick wall for you on a Saturday and forget where the wall was by Tuesday night."
"What shape?"
"4-4-2."
"Why?"
"Because that’s what we’ve always done," he said, and he said it flat, so I would know he had heard himself.
So it was the first team.
On Sunday night I had told Robyn I was helping out with the youth kids, because that was what I believed when I said it.
10 minutes later the Corsa came into the gravel car park at St Wilfrid’s.
The 3G was lit up white and the 4 towers were humming over it through the drizzle, bzzzz. The fine rain drifted across the beams like dust in a window.
By the corner flag the first team were stood in a loose huddle in whatever mismatched coats they owned, a faded Hallowfield Town raincoat, a navy Burnley one, a high-vis work fleece with a builder’s name across the back. Half of them were on the wet bench pulling shin pads on over their socks.
The cards hung over all 17 heads. I made myself look at faces instead.
These were not 15-year-olds like Kian Doyle or Rhys Barlow. These were men. 2 or 3 of them were 34, 35, older than me.
I hadn’t stood in front of a squad of men in 7 years.
Lommo clapped his big winter gloves together once, clap.
"Right, lads. Gather in. Christmas 1920. Dick, Kerr Ladies. A factory team from Preston, munitions girls out of the war. They did a 12-hour shift, and then they played."
17 faces looked back at him, blank, with the rain coming down between them and him.
"They played at Goodison Park, and 53,000 got in to watch them. There were 14,000 more locked outside in the street."
A tall lad at the back put a hand up. "Everton’s Goodison?"
"Everton’s Goodison."
"Were they paid?"
"They were paid in the factory," Lommo said. "The football money went to the wounded soldiers’ fund."
2 of the bigger, older lads at the front snorted into their collars. He carried on over the top of them.
"Factory girls. Day jobs. But they were organised, and people paid money to watch them because they knew their jobs. That’s us. Day jobs, and structure. We do this properly or we don’t bother turning up."
A short, stocky midfielder near the front started clapping. The rest of them came in after him, clap, clap, clap, a ragged ripple that went round the huddle and died out on the far side. Not one of them looked sure why he was clapping a factory team from 1920.
Lommo waited for it to stop, put the wooden clipboard under his arm, and moved me a step forward with a hand on my back.
"Lads, this is Matt Kershaw. Our new defensive coach."
Half of them looked at me with something like interest. The other half looked like men who had been told to write an essay. 2 at the back glanced at each other, and I couldn’t tell what it meant.
Lommo nudged my elbow.
"Go on, Matt. Where’s your speech?"
I have played in front of 6,000 people at Beck Road. I have stood in a room above a hotel function suite in Preston and said the worst thing I have ever said out loud.
I looked at 17 wet non-league footballers under the floodlights, and every word I had rehearsed in the shower went.
"Lads," I said. "I’m Matt. I do the defending."
The rain came off the brim of my hood.
"That’s it."
Nobody clapped.
"He’s more of a doer," Lommo said, and a couple of the younger ones laughed. "Defenders stay with Matt on this half. Midfielders and forwards with me. Diamond press, shadow shift, step up, drop off. Go on, then. Move."
He dropped his voice as he went past me.
"Keep them in a tight diamond when I put it through. If they bunch up, shout at them. You’re allowed to shout, Matt."
The oldest one at the front folded his arms.
"Is that it? We had a physio last season who talked more than that."
"Your physio didn’t have to watch you defend 92 goals," Lommo said.
That got a proper laugh, and it was a better one than the first.
They split. The 10 midfielders and forwards went off with Lommo to the far half, studs going clack, clack, clack on the path round the edge. 7 stayed on mine.
"8 on the books," Lommo called back over his shoulder. "7 turned up. 2 new lads. Tommo’s working away in Leeds till October, so don’t wait on him. Keepers come Thursdays."
"Right."
"And Swarbs’ll moan at you all night. Let him moan. He’s still stood in the right place."
Now I let myself read the cards.
The first 6 all had the same half star on them, ?☆☆☆☆, whatever the role said above it.
The 7th had 1 full star, ★☆☆☆☆. He was the oldest of the 7 by a distance, grey bristling at his temples, bow-legged, a thick black neoprene knee strap on his left leg.
Pete Swarbrick, 34. He was sighing before I had set out a single cone.
Their Standouts sat at the bottom of the cards, 1 number each. Everything under that was stamped in red. [LOCKED].
Some of it my eyes can do, and I have been watching defenders for 20 years: who moves and who is slow off the mark, who tackles like he means it, who stands in the right place without being told.
What my eyes can’t get at is the inside of a man’s head. What he does in the half second after he misjudges a bounce. Whether he panics, or dives in, or holds his shape and waits.
I had been carrying 2 unlocks since Sunday night.
I turned my back on the far half, so there was nobody in front of me but my 7, and put the line up.
Bzzt.
[Unlock 2 attributes. Target’s Reputation must be lower than yours.]
[Eligible targets in view: 7]
All 7 of them. Every man on this half of the grass was under me.
Obscure, then, the same word off my own managerial line on the bus, and it had just told me plainly that they sat below where I sat. It was the Local on my player line they were under, not the 4 points I had for managing.
Part-timers at tier 7. Nobody outside this valley has ever heard their names.
I turned round and let my eyes go back over the whole pitch, and the number climbed while they went. 9. 12, 16, 17.
It stopped at 17. There were 18 of us stood on that grass.
Lommo’s card sat over his head exactly as it had on Sunday. Work Rate 161, and 34 red locks under it.
Whatever I picked, it wasn’t going to open him.
I crouched at the touchline with the rain running off my collar and thought about it properly.
Pace, spring and tackle timing I can get with my own eyes, given a fortnight. The 2 I wanted were the ones you only find out when a game goes wrong: how a man chooses, and how he holds himself together after he has chosen badly.
Decisions.
Composure.
Decisions: Unlocked
Composure: Unlocked
2 more lines came up in clean white across all 7 cards at once.
I left them where they were.
I got the little red notebook out of my fleece and clicked the biro, click.
"Are we doing this," Swarbrick said, "or are we watching you think?"
Somebody behind him laughed. He wasn’t playing to them. He had a bad knee and an hour and a half of wet plastic in front of him and he wanted it started.
"Back 4," I said. "On the edge of the box. Swarbs, right side of the middle 2."
Then I looked at the 7 of them properly.