The moment my right boot came down onto the synthetic rubber crumb of the St Wilfrid’s 3G pitch, the dark night air exploded into light.
It wasn’t just the glare from the four lattice-steel floodlights towering over the high green mesh fence, buzzing like angry hornets in the damp chill. It was the emerald-green glow that burst open right in front of my face.
Cards. Floating, razor-sharp UI windows locked directly over the heads of the lads running drills in the middle of the pitch.
CLICK.
The sound went off behind my left ear again, neat and crisp, like a tiny mechanical relay clicking into place inside my skull. I flinched, almost stepping backward off the turf, but the floating cards stayed steady, tracking the movement of every single player in real-time.
A stocky kid in an oversized red shirt jogged past me toward the edge of the penalty box, chest heaving violently as he came off a shooting drill. His dark fringe was plastered flat against his forehead with sweat, and his shinpads were tucked awkwardly on the outside of his socks, just like kids used to wear them when I was fifteen back on the Cotton Street rec.
A bright rectangle hovered two inches above his damp hair.
Name: Kian Doyle
Age: 15
Position: ST (C) | Striker (Central)
Best Role: Poacher ★☆☆☆☆
Standout: Off The Ball 128
A poacher. One star. His best number was his movement off the ball the quiet, instinctual knack for sniffing out scraps inside the six-yard box.
I stood near the corner flag, adjusting to the sensory overload. To my right, three parents were leaning against the cold wire mesh fence, holding steaming paper cups from the Esso petrol station down the road.
These weren’t silent background extras standing around waiting for a cue. They were local working-class parents who had just finished eight-hour Sunday shifts, shivering in their coat collars, complaining about petrol prices and local gossip while their lads tried to kick their way out of non-league oblivion.
A woman nearest to me pulled the plastic lid off her cup with a sharp pop, blowing a pale cloud of steam into the chilly evening air. She was wearing a faded blue-and-white acrylic scarf tucked into the neck of her parka the old Hallowfield Town crest from ten years ago, back when we were still pulling four thousand through the turnstiles at Beck Road.
I shifted my gaze to the top of her head.
Nothing. Just wet hair, a knitted woollen hat, and the faint smell of instant coffee and cheap menthol cigarettes.
No stats. No boxes. No green text. The System didn’t care about spectators.
"Who’s that big fella standing by Lommo?" the woman whispered in a raspy, tobacco-cuffed voice, nudging the bloke next to her a man in a high-vis jacket with plaster dust dried into the seams of his jeans. "The giant in the trainers."
"Never seen him," the plasterer muttered, taking a sip from his cup. "Looks like he’s come straight off a warehouse shift. Look at his trainers. Flat as pancakes."
"No... wait," the woman said, squinting through the mesh fence, her eyes narrowing as she studied my jawline under the harsh floodlights. Her voice dropped half an octave, carrying sharply on the wind. "Jesus Christ. That’s Kershaw, isn’t it? Matt Kershaw."
"Who?"
"Kershaw! The fella from Hallowfield Town! The one who got done for taking backhanders! You remember seven years back, all over the Manchester Evening News. Selling corners for betting syndicates."
"Never," the plasterer said, turning his head to stare properly. "That cheat? What’s Lommo doing bringing a spot-fixer round these lads?"
"Ssh! He’ll hear you!"
"I don’t give a toss if he hears me," the bloke snapped, loud enough for his voice to rattle against the green wire. "My lad works sixty hours a week on a scaffolding rig in the freezing rain just to pay for his boots, and this bastard took five grand a corner to throw matches!"
I kept my back turned, staring fixedly onto the pitch, my stomach tightening into a hard, cold knot.
Seven years.
Seven years in a distribution warehouse, seven years of paying my debt, and the moment I set foot on a pitch, the rumor mill started spinning all over again. In northern football, nobody forgets.
The gossip travels faster than a cross-field diagonal ball from pub taprooms to Sunday league sidelines, passed along by blokes who remembered every bad pass, every red card, and every scandal that ever touched their local clubs.
I forced my focus back onto the pitch, letting my eyes wander from trialist to trialist. As soon as I focused on a player, a fresh system card materialized over his head, held its position while I scanned it, and then faded into translucent thread the second I looked away.
These kids weren’t video game NPCs either. They were living, breathing, sweating teenagers carrying the full weight of their working-class lives onto the turf.
I saw a central defender with a box showing Bravery 142 but Passing 48.
He had red brick dust caked under his fingernails and hands rougher than a butcher’s block a sixteen-year-old bricklayer’s apprentice who had spent his Sunday morning shifting breeze blocks before coming here to run himself into the ground.
A gangly left-back with a chest full of nervous energy and not a single technical attribute above 60. He kept tugging at his shirt, his chest heaving as he muttered under his breath, terrified of getting cut before Tuesday.
A central midfielder who kept looking down at his boots every time the ball rolled toward him a lad smelling faintly of chip-fat from his part-time shift at Sal’s, his legs shaking with fatigue.
Then my eyes caught a small lad standing on the far edge of a passing square, and the system box that snapped into place made my breath catch in my throat.
He was tiny. Easily the smallest kid on the pitch, wearing a baggy black tracksuit with the sleeves pulled down over his knuckles to keep his fingers warm against the damp wind. But when the ball was played into his feet, he didn’t look down. He didn’t even look at the ball.
He had already checked his shoulder twice before the pass arrived. His head was on a swivel, scanning the space behind him, calculating his next three moves before his boot ever touched rubber.
The ball zipped in across the slick artificial grass whack and he took it with the inside of his left boot. A single, feather-light touch. Before the defender closing him down could even turn his hips or plant his back foot, the small lad was already past him, gliding around the yellow traffic cone like a ghost.
Name: Rhys Barlow
Age: 16
Position: AM (L) | Attacking Midfielder (Left)
Best Role: Inside Forward ★★☆☆☆
Standout: Acceleration 158
Two full stars.
At sixteen years old, in a town seven miles up a dark valley, this lad had an Acceleration rating of 158 out of 200. That wasn’t non-league pace. That was Championship pace. That was the kind of explosive burst that made full-backs pull hamstrings trying to turn with him.
Inside Forward ★★☆☆☆.
I memorized the name instantly, storing it away in the folder that had unrolled inside my head the night before. Rhys Barlow.
"Right! Bring it in!" a voice bellowed from the touchline.
A man was pacing down the sideline with a wooden clipboard tucked under his arm. I knew the walk before I could even see his face under the floodlights.
He walked with that same heavy, rolling gait he’d had fifteen years ago when we played together at Beck Road shoulders set wide, elbows jutting out, looking like he was actively daring anyone on the pitch to step into his path.
Craig Lomax. Lommo.
He looked older, of course. We both did. His face was weathered and lined around the eyes from years of cold Tuesday nights in northern football, his sandy hair thinning out at the temples.
He was wearing an official Ellerby Bridge Town coat that looked at least two sizes too big for his frame, the padded hem hanging down past his knees, and a chrome whistle hung from a blue bootlace around his neck. A blue biro was tied to the top of his clipboard with a ragged piece of twine.
Floating above his navy woollen bobble hat was a full playing card, solid and opaque.
Name: Craig Lomax
Age: 38
Position: D (L) | Left Back
Best Role: Full-Back ★★☆☆☆
Standout: Work Rate 161
I stared at the box. The parents at the fence had nothing. The kids had scout cards. But Lommo had a full playing profile, complete with his old position and his star rating.
Did the System treat him as a player because he was still registered somewhere? He was thirty-eight.
The last I’d heard through the grapevine, maybe four or five years back, he was coaching academy kids over in Preston while driving a delivery van on six-am routes to pay his mortgage.
Was he still turning out for some Sunday league side on a weekend just to kick people? Or did the System grant him a full profile because he held a formal coaching role at a club?
Lommo stopped pacing. He turned his head, squinted into the white glare of the floodlights toward the corner flag, and caught sight of me standing by the gate.
He froze for a fraction of a second. Then his mouth curled up into that familiar, crooked half-grin the exact same grin he used to give referees at Beck Road right after he’d caught an opposition winger with a late tackle and was trying to avoid a yellow card.
"Well, well," Lommo barked, his rough Lancashire voice carrying easily over the hum of the floodlights and the thud of footballs. "Matt Kershaw. I thought I’d seen the last of your ugly mug."
"Lommo," I said, stepping forward.
"Late for your trial," he said, tapping the wooden clipboard with his biro. "Bad start, Kershaw. Very bad start."
My brain panicked, and a knee-jerk lie tumbled out of my mouth before I could stop it. "Train was late."
It was a completely stupid thing to say.
I had taken the 502 bus up the valley, gotten off thirty minutes early at the main ground, talked to Stan the groundsman, and walked up a steep hill past two pubs called The Fleece.
I could have just told him the truth. He would have laughed, called me a soft lad, and moved on.
Instead, I stood there in my trackie bottoms, lying about a train line that hadn’t run through Ellerby Bridge since the Beeching cuts in the sixties, to a bloke I hadn’t spoken a word to in seven years.