Sonder /everybody has a story\

[jdoyle9293]

Football Manager 2016 beta is out, so I best start the prologue of my first story. Pinched the title from a very good

on a YouTube channel.

====

1

October 24, 1995

The tumultuous Bosnian sky was blotted by angry clouds, overshadowing even the most heinous of activities beneath them. Distant explosions gave light to a spectacularly harsh blanket of rainfall that smothered the bipolar city.

Warheads clattered buildings and roads to form a depressing rubble, even more so depressing was the fact that their inhabitants were all too familiar with its sound. Its appearance, they would question, would be as commonplace and routine as litter strewn over New York City or canals carved into Venice.

Elena, swollen with an almost full term of pregnancy, blanked the catastrophic sights and sounds that had become their culture as she hobbled under the dimly lit streetlights, more than half of which were displaced from the ground.

Compounding the risk of arguably one of the deadliest places on Earth in the current climate was the audacious escape from her homeland and into the enemy’s garden.

She cornered a bombed out car that illuminated road signs, peppered with bullet wounds. Elena shielded her face as not to be usurped by the enemy. The smouldering wreckage gave way for her final checkpoint, a half collapsed multi-storey car park.

The car park was ugly prior to its destruction, serving as her poetic freedom as she marked it off internally as a matter of two hundred yards to the boat.

She allowed her left arm to drop exhaustedly to her side, allowing her to graze the car park’s stony wall. The lining of the building synchronised with her escape route and it helped guide her there: a mere staircase at the end of the street which backed out into a miniscule jetty.

On that jetty were a dozen or so of those seeking asylum in southern Yugoslavia. Croatia to the left was a no go as was the Montegrin district of Yugoslavia, at least through land anyway.

She praised the fact her rare and recognisable bump would pass for identification beyond the staircase. Not even the Moon would cast a light on the jetty, hiding behind the clouded animosity of her former country, dismayed.

The pounding sheet of rain continued to press the fabric atop of her head against her hair, a bunched up bundle of tired straw, well suited to her appearance that evening. One hand clutched her stomach whilst the other held her head garment in place, luckily the tall walls either side of the staircase blocked out the nuisance of wind.

She gingerly hobbled down the damp concrete staircase to a sodden jetty. The clank of her flat shoes on the wood piqued the interest of her fellow asylum seekers, startling them momentarily.

A hushed sigh of relief washed over the darkened jetty where around fourteen or fifteen people sheltered from the rain against a wall. One man, with a firm steel toe-capped boot resting on the rickety boat held three passports in his hand. His foot continued to wrestle with the untied rebellious boat as she slowly approached him.

“Name, please.” The thick Eastern European accent boomed through his hood, veiled to cover up his appearance from afar. To Elena he was dishevelled, hidden through tired eyes and a wiry beard that grazed his raincoat. Most importantly of all, with him she would be safe.

“Elena. Elena Klobucar.” The name was half-right. The man in front of Ms. Klobucar thumbed through the three remaining passports in his hands and handed her the one in his right hand. The matching picture and name was found by Elena, it snapped back to reveal the front cover.

SFR JUGOSLAVIJA.

The vile emblem was emblazoned proudly beneath. Elena winced as she joined the rest of the refugees by the wall. She fell into a daze, staring through glazed eyes, all of which were looking in her direction: some fell towards her mid-drift.

Encased in her stomach signalled the hope, hope which translated onto the faces of those stood in a line in front of her.

The arching of a few smiles in front of her involuntarily crowbarred one from her own face. It felt unnatural so she quickly straightened her mouth and leaned against the back wall of the jetty.

“We’re just waiting for one more person and then we’ll be on our way.” The booming voice returned from somewhere vaguely near the boat, creaking against the trickles of waves coming into shore.

Elena exhaled, the sound of the rain against the Adriatic Sea soothing her slightly. She delved into her handbag, rummaging beyond scraps of clothing to find her tattered, penniless purse.

Her last fifty marks went towards the forged documents.

She faintly rubbed the picture on the inside fold, it contained the great man who had gifted her the greatest present imaginable.

[jdoyle9293]

Of course, silly me. :')

====

2

November 5, 1997

Feint pops and glows from the sporadic and impatient Bonfire Night revellers south of the River Thames flitted in and out of view of the small room in the maternity ward. The brisk, surprisingly bright day had been borrowed for a harsh November evening, soon to be awash with a glut of firework displays and bonfires.

On the other side of the coin, Mr. and Mrs. Marsden had cut short their days at work and home respectively to pay a visit to the local hospital, despite the wife’s protestations about their first born being born south of the River.

“What’s he going to grow up like?” She quipped in between early, breathless contractions.

“I’m not sure it makes a difference, dear.” He tentatively replied, shifting his oversized and uncomfortable maternity outfit he was forced to change into as his wife of eight years began the solemn process of producing their first child with a disgusted tut.

“John, please be passionate. Just this once.” The husband nodded in compliance—a nearby nurse had to smile. John was in complete awe. When his son read his first book, graduated from university, produced a child of his own John wouldn’t remember the immaterial words he endeavoured to soothe the searing pain of his wife with in her intense labour.

Neither would his wife.

As sure as she was in deep and intense pain, her nails dug craters into the mountainous knuckles of her husband.

“Do you remember that time when you first met my parents?” John’s method down the route of nostalgia was shot down with a simple, scathing glance.

His attempts to regale her with funny stories from their past was fruitless, they fell on deaf ears as her immediate family strolled into the room.

“Thank God, you’re here!” The dilated wife screamed as she transferred her vicious grip onto her sister and mother. Her husband exchanged brief pleasantries with her family, he sank into a dark corner of the room as the stage’s spotlight shifted onto the family.

“Couldn’t you have got my daughter a room facing away from that enormous racket outside?” Her father bellowed, attached with a professional poker face.

“Well, they’re everywhere tonight, I suppose.” He nervously laughed, divvying up his response with a mixture of feigned laughter and a serious response. If he aimed for both possible conversations then he couldn’t lose. His father-in-law smiled.

Phew, he thought—for a second he became paranoid that his relief was too visible. For the first time in a long time, the pang of disappointment of his presence worn on the faces of his in-laws had become present. Almost instantly—at the wedding reception, no less—there was a realisation that he had married into an impossibly ambitious family.

Of course the country pub’s vast and antique function room wasn’t suited to their needs.

The deafening screams from his wife vastly outweighed the night sky’s coloured explosions as a placenta-drenched lifeform was squeezed into the smiling midwife’s arms.

6lbs 11oz. Ben.

[jdoyle9293]

3

January 19, 1999

The sun had yet to escape the diminutive skyline of Bekwai yet celebrations were well underway. The dry season inflicted on the Ghanaian Midlands continued to leave destruction in its wake.

Preparations had been put in place for a parallel celebration to the huge Christmas festivities should the Koude family experience a premature birth. There was no such luck, despite the long drought they had lived through over the past two months.

Dust lingered in the air—with the wet season not even remotely within touching distance. It would get warmer, hardly the ideal conditions for the fragility of a baby to develop.

The Koude family were not poor by standards of Bekwai, they had shelter, almost regular sustenance with a school and a hospital nearby. Kwasi, the father to the newly-born Kwabena, had a plan—more than most that he knew.

His continued work at the local school would eventually result in a prolonged stay at Dodi Island in Eastern Ghana.

The plan was to stay in that tropical world for months or years as something to give their family life an ounce of meaning.

The percussion leather beats mix with the smattering of candles—a present from a foreign land—interacting with the low dusk light and swallowing particles of dust, heightening the atmosphere.

The small child, wrapped in white sheets is passed from blessed person to blessed person who each comfort the child, on the verge of tears and screams due to the spectacle.

Kwabena's globe, a red hue of a barely clouded sky is routinely blotted by enormous interfering figures omitting strange noises from holes at the bottom of their faces.

At the foot of the line, Kwabena is passed onto his joyous parents, almost sobbing through the palpable joy that has been bestowed upon them. They retreat into their house, smiles as wide as the Nile as their exit only serves to increase the volume of the community.

[jdoyle9293]

4

July 13, 2004

The cloud of haze had swept across from the metropolis, blocking out the intense sunlight but instead drenching the playing fields below in a misty, overcast humidity. The artificial surface prickled Jun’s hamstrings as he peered through the parents and substitutes on the touchline.

Thrown over his back was a tracksuit top with his name and junior football club badge stitched into the top right corner. The same club badge was attached to his brother’s shirt as he screamed for the ball on the right wing, on the opposite side of the 7-a-side pitch.

Wu picked up the ball near the right touchline, dancing in between two tall defenders, momentarily slipped on the greasy surface before clipping the ball over the minute onrushing goalkeeper to give his school a 3-1 lead with a couple of minutes remaining on the clock.

Jun rose to his feet, slaloming between the parents in front of him on the touchline, clapping his hands and cheering. Wu darted his eyes across the pitch before racing through opponents and teammates alike to slap Jun’s hand in celebration.

“Is he your friend?” A bystander asked in Jun’s direction.

“My brother.” Jun immediately clasped his hand towards his mouth, trying to plug the words and syllables which escaped his mouth. Desperately, Jun attempted to retrieve his utterance out of the air and ram back down his own throat.

He felt the compression of the turf behind his suddenly numb body.

“Hello, can you come with me, please?” A uniformed man greeted Jun as he twirled slowly on the spot, finding his brother on the left-wing.

“Wu! Follow me!” Jun darted across the width of the pitch, scooping Wu up as he skirted across the turf. They both ignored the static coming from a walkie talkie in the distance behind the brothers.

Wu, two years Jun’s junior, scuttled across the grass as they both aimed for the narrow void by the corner flag not inhabited by parents and footballers at the tournament. Jun clattered into the corner flag, the school gates of freedom only slightly beyond his reach.

“Jun! Jun!” The high pitched squeal came from the fake AstroTruf in the middle of the pitch, Jun fighting to get back onto the pitch as two uniformed officers locked their grip onto Wu’s arms and shoulders.

“Step away, child!” Jun collapsed on the spot upon the orders of the officers as they carted Wu away, his football boots tickling the grass, his arms flailing aimlessly above his head.

[tenthreeleader]

I do like how you describe your world. Not a lot of people do that and it's great for the reader's eye.

[edtheguy]

This is a very good start. I am enjoying reading it, some very nice setting of the stage here. Looking forward to more!

[EvilDave]

I have no idea where you're going with this, but you paint a vivid picture and I want to know more. Looking forward to seeing how this develops!

[jdoyle9293]

5

April 29, 2005

From the moment Alejandro had re-taken his seat after lunch, he had perpetually locked his eyes onto the clock on the classroom’s far wall. It read 13:07 when he first glanced at it and a mere two hours later he was twitching nervously in his seat in expectation.

Fortunately for the young boy, his teacher had handed him the perfect seat—one adjacent to the door—so he could make a premature dash from the humid room’s exit. He could smell the dusty afternoon freedom of a sun-soaked April in the outermost part of Bogota.

“You are all dismissed. Enjoy your weekend!” The teacher exclaimed. Before he could finish his utterance, Alejandro had bulleted down the corridor at breakneck speed, gliding in and out of his fellow students who had broken out of their weekday scholar shackles to enjoy an all too brief weekend.

He burst through the glass doors, the sun striking his face. For that split second at the end of every day as he passed the threshold into the outside world he imagined looking up to the blinding sun. His teammates celebrating around him as he heads in the winner at a Copa America final played in his native land—just as Ivan Cordoba had done four years previously.

As a five-year old child at the time, it was Alejandro’s first memory of football. The entire neighbourhood congregated around a smattering of televisions, from the gasps and awe of the early parachutist plummeting safely to the turf to the undiluted elation of Cordoba’s flicked header that had won Colombia’s first ever Copa America.

Just four years later, they were on the brink of another World Cup qualifying elimination—a recent loss last month in Buenos Aries at the hands of Hernan Crespo had broken Alejandro’s spirit. His father told him that Colombia’s time in the World Cup would come again.

Due to his age, he had only received permission to learn of the haunting story surrounding the 1994 World Cup and the own goal which cost poor Andres Escobar’s life. Hopefully, the father would often say to his son, that he could be the one to create the next biggest moment for Colombia.

The pavement, weeds sprouting up through the cracks, were danced through by Alejandro’s feet, an imaginary ball stapled to his foot as he imagined tearing opposition’s defences wide open.

Grinding the slick move to a halt outside the rusty iron school gates was the last line of defence, his towering father slumped over his seventeen year old Mercedes-Benz.

“Get in the car. We need to go!” His father, agitated, tensed into a vertical position and helped his son into the four-seater with a helping hand. Alejandro fell face first into the gear stick as his father hurried around the front of the vehicle to dive into the driver’s seat, translating tyre marks onto the road as the antique of a car screeched down the hill.

Passing less and less familiar landmarks across the city of Bogota, Alejandro’s nerves got the better of him as his father, lurched over the wheel of the car, wore a haggard expression on his face.

“Where are we going, Dad?” Alejandro’s innocent face gazed up into father’s distracted glare, focused only passing through sporadic traffic through the capital’s city centre.

“Somewhere new. I’ve got all of your things in the boot of the car. Where would you like to go?” Although confused at his father’s desperate response, Alejandro pondered for a second as the car shuttled through the broad roads at illegal speeds.

“Brazil?” Alejandro shrugged his shoulders. The decision was purely based on football—as was the majority of his life.

“Where? Brazil is a big place.” Alejandro shrugged again.

“Sao Paulo?” Alejandro’s father smirked at his son’s suggestion. He was privy to the footballing reasons behind his answer but it coincidentally fitted into his ideal scenario. They didn’t have the money to flee the continent but a big, relatively comforting city on the Eastern side of Brazil would be achievable with their limited budget.

The tyres whirred to a standstill inside the sheltered car park of the El Dorado International Airport.

“Come on. Quick, quick!” Alejandro was almost dragged into the rarely air conditioned Bogota Airport off his feet as his father handled several holdalls and his wallet in the other hand.

“Two tickets to Sao Paulo, please.” The customer assistant, within three minutes, had supplied Alejandro and his father two relatively cheap airline tickets and the two had arrived at the next checkpoint, the check-in desk.

“But Dad, what about Mum and Daniela and Maria?” His two older sisters, who had been failed to be picked up from school, weren’t in sight and he presumed weren’t beyond the tall desk that stood as his last line of defence.

“They will be joining us soon.” Before Alejandro could question the numerous holes that flawed his masterplan, he was hauled through into a vast departure lounge without touching the ground as they finally made their way through to their corresponding gate.

“But they don’t know where we are going.” Alejandro’s father shot him a scathing look in return that advised him what to do with his mouth.

[jdoyle9293]

6

May 26, 2008

The playground was littered with children on a day missing a storm cloud or two from the typical Australian winter. Eva, three feet off the painted gravel of the far wall, appointed herself as the observer of all below her.

The twelve-year old’s skirt tickled her olive-skinned knees, the flowery chequered yellow and white school shirt uniformly tucked into the comparatively dull grey skirt. The little breeze afforded to her in the baking Brisbane heat wafted shreds of her mousey-brown fringe down onto her barely visible eyebrows. She oversaw an informal game of football on the torched, thinning grass to her right played by a group of fifteen or so boys from her class.

She had always been more interested in watching football than participating in games girls would likely be playing. This wasn’t because of the boys who played them as her mother and father teased, but because of the entertainment of it all. She didn’t follow a team in Australia, mainland Europe or England, just merely followed the sport.

Oftentimes her teachers, complete strangers in the grand scheme of things, would label her a tom-boy. That was utterly wrong. She was as girly as they came, stereotypically watching the shows they did, listened to the music they did and did the things they did.

Her only subversion was the deep passion she held for football.

Everybody was a stranger to Eva, with the exception of some parts of herself and a couple of close family members—parents and brother. Everybody else was the low whirring of background noise that she needn’t pay attention to. Her academic career was just as consigned to that as the homeless men she passed on the way to school every day without a second thought.

The utopia of the vast school playground was interrupted by the entropy of a pitch invasion of older schoolboys into the football match taking place to the side of Eva on the almost bald, dusty patch of grass.

The taller of the five invaders, dived comically into a tackle on his younger counterpart, missing purposely by a few metres as his four friends almost fell to the floor in laughter. Eva squinted menacingly as a second boy stole the ball from the boy’s grasp, turning on a sixpence before charging up the field, three following him as the younger schoolboys stood in disbelief, too scared to interfere in their own downfall.

Eva forced the weight onto her arms and leapt from her usual perch at the back of the playground, seeing her opportunity as the unwitting pitch invaders sprinted up the pitch.

Eva, dove from gravel onto the grass, without much change in comfort underfoot as she dragged her oversized pumps through the beach-like football field. Her brain had only consciously realised the kinetic decision when she was in spitting distance of her target and at that point it was too late.

An inch perfect sliding tackle hooked the ball from control over the older child, spewing it out into no man’s land between the four football thieves and the tallest, most probable leader of the group. The ball was inches closer to him as both of their eyes shot wide open, pupils dilated as Eva began to race down the field.

She had no chance.

The downhill gradient of the pitch allowed her some advantage, though, as she only needed one touch to humiliate the tall boy of around fifteen or sixteen years. His legs were spread perfectly as she knocked the ball through the gap before nonchalantly gifting the ball back to her classmates with a side-foot pass.

Without words she returned to the back wall in the playground, flashing a smile towards the group of defeated boys who sloped up towards the school entrance. As she climbed back to her watch tower, the cost of her prideful moment was evident and pulsating on her knee. A bloodied graze—another signifier to her misconceived tom-boy lifestyle.

As she relaxed against the back wall, something she would rarely do—if it was a special occasion like the final day of term or a colder day—a blurry figure from the football field came into focus.

“Hey. Eva?” The boy motioned with his arms. She concluded that he was taking a remote guess at her name. Nobody really knew who she was. “We’ve got odd numbers, would you like to play?” She nodded and smiled.

[jdoyle9293]

7

June 30, 2009

The plane leaned in, complying with the gravitational force attached to the huge rocks and waters below it, this allowed the blinding spotlight of the sun to attack Jun. Still, just like any other checkpoint in the past few years since the separation from his brother, he was undeterred, quietly sitting bolt upright and staring into the headrest in front of him.

He would blink and look down at his dirtied shoes every so often so the elderly Thai woman next to him wouldn’t be paranoid about his catatonic state. Below the tin can filled to the brim with human life and one cat was the south coast of Australia—Sydney had been and gone with the lonely island of Tasmania was some way in the distance.

Jun was set for Melbourne.

His Aunt and Uncle lived in the city centre down in the one-nation continent, and picking up the English language would be fairly easy, he imagined. Whenever his family members from Australia visited his birthplace of Suzhou, they would attempt to teach him a smattering of English phrases. They were both school teachers, China had some Australian teachers too, as did Japan, Thailand and Singapore but Australia was a more popular destination for those in South-East Asia as well as the Chinese and South Koreans.

At fourteen years of age, Jun couldn’t survive in Japan’s expensive cities alongside a couple of his cousins, plus he didn’t know as much Japanese as he did English—which was surprising to his Aunt and Uncle—foreign language teachers.

After an emergency phone call a few weeks before Jun and his parents celebrated the vast silk-themed New Year celebrations in the city, the wheels were set in motion to finally move out of the black hole that was his homeland. How could he be a part of such barbaric society?

Five weeks ago, his father gave his permission to live with his extended family in Melbourne, silently agreeing to the reasons for his departure but maintaining his governmental line on the whole affair, as was his job to do so. His mother was distraught.

Only on the ten-hour flight did Jun realise his selfishness, his parents had lost one child five years ago for keeping a six-year old sibling a secret. Naively, on his travel to Melbourne, he wondered if his parents would regain Wu due to his own migration to Australia, almost emphatically not he concluded.

Still he had to be undeterred. In an extreme and entirely subjective way of labelling China, in his head he thought of them as, morally, a small-time North Korea. Patrolled and policed to extreme measures, the measures that kept almost 1.5 billion people in check. He wanted out.

As he searched deep in his mind for a happy solution for all, the plane’s wheels had stuck to the blisteringly hot tarmac of the Tullamarine Airport runway, he had avoided the traumatic thirty minutes of landing by blurring out the physical reality, choosing his continued delve into the mind.

Waiting for him in arrivals were the beaming faces his Aunt and Uncle, known in Australia by their western names, May and Rocky. Almost instantly, perhaps because of his own depressions, he saw the vulnerability in their eyes. From their perspective, he could only imagine, that they had a new responsibility now—ushering Jun through life in Australia, it might as well have been a different world.

May’s eyes translated a sadness onto Jun, her sister—whom luckily was born in 1976, just two years before their nation’s one child policy came into effect. When an unexpected Wu was born two years after Jun, May was listed as his registered mother and without children of her own, rendered the situation flimsily legal. That is, until Jun opened his mouth five long years ago.

Jun and Wu were born into a family with very hard-faced parents, without any need for entertainment and especially not sport or the like. May and Rocky were the opposite—passionate at their core for sports such as basketball, football and baseball.

Most people who lived in the area that they did were in the midst of following Yao Ming’s NBA run with the Houston Rockets. Billboards soared over the highways of Shanghai whenever they visited. Rocky’s sport was football, his team were inexplicably Birmingham City. Jun pondered as Rocky squeezed him tightly with a hug, whether or not he’d ever get to the bottom of that fact whilst in Melbourne.

[edtheguy]

Nicely done, every installment piques the interest and makes me want to read more. Keep it up!

[jdoyle9293]

8

May 9, 2010

One year and sporadic friendships later. Jun’s introduction into Australian life wasn’t the torrent of playground bullying and racial slurs that he might have expected—the football took care of that.

Before his first day, his uncle told him: “Jun, football will take care of everything, don’t worry. Have fun today.” Admittedly, it was a few days after his Birmingham City team were beaten 2-1 by Tottenham Hotspur in the Premier League, he was still on a hangover of that defeat and their poor start of four points from four games.

“I can’t take it if we’re relegated—we don’t get too much coverage of the lower leagues in England.” Rocky would constantly tell Jun, this coming after their promotion that summer. To be fair, football did solve all of his social problems that year. The sports teams’ try-outs were the first week and with the majority of the fourteen year olds wanting to play Rugby League, it was almost inevitable he would be starting every game for the football team.

Nonetheless, he blitzed the try-outs, scoring countless goals in the forty-minute six-a-side match.

“I’ve never seen football played like that by a fourteen year old before.” The school’s football manager and prominent P.E. teacher was sat on a grassy banking applauding Jun from the field of play as he welcomed in the next six-a-side team for a second try-out match.

In high school, more so in Australia than in China, popularity came with the ability to play sport. Jun was popular but clever, a tantalising mix, one that a lot of the teachers had apparently never seen at that school before. He would be acing Chemistry exams one day and scoring a hat-trick in front of thirty parents the next day.

As April became May, Jun was firing on all cylinders academically and athletically. He was picked in the 4x100 relay team for the Melbourne Schools’ Olympics in June as well as captaining the school team to a Melbourne School League title. The second weekend of May was as pivotal as any weekend that Jun had ever experienced.

The school’s cup final was to be played on the Saturday before a nationwide football tournament deep in the heart of Victoria, but surprisingly not in Melbourne, the following day. The cup final was a piece of cake, as was the unbeaten league season, Jun netted two in a 4-0 victory and as the captain, Jun became the “most successful foreign sports person in the school’s history” by his P.E. teacher and coach, dancing around the racism that could’ve lurked amongst that sentence.

Jun was happy and deep into the eight-game World Cup-style tournament in Bendigo, Victoria—at the semi-final stage, the pinnacle of this was achieved. Extra time in the twenty minute each way game had beckoned and Jun’s second of the match in a 5-4 howitzer of a contest ended the game on the Golden Goal rule. The bipolar football pitch erupted from one corner as two sets of families started their car engines—their child’s schools were eliminated.

Jun’s goal in the opening minutes of the final wouldn’t win the tournament as a team from Sydney claimed the prize in a nervy 2-1 win from two late goals. Whilst they were congratulated at the final whistle and awarded gold medals and a big trophy for the school’s trophy cabinet, Jun settled for a participation medal.

Jun was awarded the ultimate prize, though.

“Hey, kid.” A young, tanned and blonde gentleman walked up to May, Rocky and Jun at the close of play, “you played fantastically out there today!” Despite his enthusiasm, the light was leaving Australia and an almost two-hour drive back into Melbourne’s city centre was ahead of them. Jun just wanted to leave, so he nodded his head gratefully for the man’s compliment.

“Wait. I’m from Melbourne Heart. We want to invite you to a schoolboys try-out at the start of next month. On the third of June.” Jun swivelled on the spot as Rocky punched the air, cheering in a premature celebration.

Wide-mouthed and without words, Jun nodded and shook the man’s hand, now known to be Craig.

“Thank you very much Craig. I will be there.”

“Eleven a.m. sharp! See you soon.” Craig’s walk back to his car almost had the same gleeful skip as Rocky’s as they entered a delightfully air-conditioned Ford C-Max with a collective smile on their faces.

[jdoyle9293]

9

June 5, 2010

Three hours in the baking Melbourne heat of June was enough for any person to be able to cope with, never mind teenagers ranging in the ages of thirteen and sixteen. Jun collapsed to the floor as the final whistle blew on the day’s try-outs. Around him were eleven others, each one exhausted and trying to find their feet in the winter’s sun.

They all retired to the small clubhouse, inside that was a minute changing room where they all prepared to learn their outcome. Who would be joining Melbourne Heart on a youth contract and who would be shown the door and forced to try again sometime in the distant future?

Jun was at the back of the changing room and, although used to worse humidity back in Suzhou, continued to pour water over himself before pulling on his Shanghai Shenhua jersey from a couple of seasons ago. It grazed at his waist line, an indicator that he had been gone from home for far too long and needed a replacement.

Maybe that replacement would be in the form of a Melbourne Heart jersey, alongside ten teammates in the academy.

There were only seven Australians awaiting the call into the academy manager’s office, alongside two from Singapore, one from Japan, Jun, one from New Zealand and another from Thailand. Jun fancied his chances, he had outperformed most or all in each task and thought he had put a good shift in in the final six-a-side match, playing out of position at full-back before moving out onto the wing.

He had netted three times in the thirty-five minute match, more than any other, so he was up there as a contender. He didn’t want to get too excited. Each player was called into the manager’s office one by one, with their boot bags so if there was a player quota, the rest of us couldn’t sniff it out by identifying who had been rejected or accepted when they returned.

Jun thought long and hard about what he could’ve done to impressed the manager more, it wasn’t a long list in actuality, despite his time spent out of position. After the hard think, he was left in the room with Daeng, the Thai boy. He looked at least three years older than Jun but with Jun at fifteen years old, he must’ve only been sixteen due to the try-outs having an age restriction of sixteen years and younger.

He could’ve easy lied about his age; Jun hardly faced a stringent background check upon his arrival to the academy that morning. It wasn’t a fantastic set-up in all honesty, but this was a stepping stone to better things; maybe Jun wasn’t cut out to be a footballer, anyway.

Daeng traded short and sharp looks in Jun’s direction until he was called into the academy manager's office, a few minutes later, Jun was called in. Daeng’s smile at the office's exit told him all he needed to know about his outcome, somehow shortening Jun’s odds in the process.

“We really like you, Jun. Believe it or not the academy has been crying out for a playmaker like you. I know you didn’t belong on the wing or back in defence but that’s something you’ve got to work on—be more vocal. If you had told me or one of the coaches you were an attacking midfielder, we would’ve put you there. You’re one of the better players from the pack we’ve had out there today. We’d like to offer you a two-year long youth contract at Melbourne Heart.” Jun’s heart sunk but his smile appeared first.

“Of course, coach. I’ll telephone my aunt and uncle straight away.” Rocky was going to be punching the air when he heard about his nephew’s achievement.

Jun strode out of the manager’s office and out of the clubhouse. Outside the clubhouse, in the baking heat, Daeng stood there staring straight at him.

“Bye.” Jun muttered to his Thai counterpart, or perhaps teammate. He quickly dashed down the road, the academy manager’s contact details in his hands. It would take him four minutes to be at his uncle’s house—he’d get there in two and a half.

[Cheesey1975]

looking forward to following this one

[jdoyle9293]

10

June 6, 2010

Matko laid back in the patchy touchline grass, his legs in the air within the hope that a gentle breeze was gust through his thighs, cooling him down in the 30*C Donetsk air. The second half stood in his junior football team’s way between their second successive league title for the Donetsk area. They were leading at the half-time interval 4-1 and with most of their frontmen waning, he was confident of his chances of keeping them at bay alongside his tall centre half partner, even if he was a bit of a flake when it came to set pieces.

The fault of their only goal—his team’s eleventh concession in 31 games throughout the entire season—was due to Matko’s centre half partner. He misjudged a header on the edge of the six yard box from a corner on the left, allowing an unsighted opposition player to bundled the ball in with his shins. Catastrophe.

If that goal, at the end of the first half, was to cost Matko a contract with some of the bigger Eastern European teams today he would be the first one to exact revenge the following day before school started. He was the type that was into drama, dancing and singing—Matko was his polar opposite, perhaps that’s why they worked quite well as a duo.

Although, Matko knew why. Matko knew he was the best player on the team by a distance, he mopped up Vlad’s imperfections, he was the Nemanja Vidic piece of the team. That type of player is always in demand especially in the Ukraine and Russia, not so much in Poland anymore but that didn’t dampen Matko’s spirits. He was only looking for one club’s scouts in particular—Dynamo Kyiv.

Despite the match being played in the Eastern part of the country, teams from Kyiv would still send scouts over to Donetsk. It had become a footballing hotbed in the country thanks to Shakhtar’s prominence in the Champions League in recent years—but that remained a club that he would not sign for.

If they came a-knocking after the game, Matko would be belligerent and reject them. Metalist Kharkiv, also in the North, would be hard to turn down, they were a close second in Matko’s opinion.

His manager had warned about the teams coming to visit, just to see him and their star striker in action. The Donetsk local junior league was the biggest in the entire country, even bigger than Kyiv’s—somewhat of a surprise, which is why Matko clung onto hope that Dynamo and Metalist would be watching.

He had suffered disappointment throughout his life, though—football his one source of happiness. Skip school, watch football, maybe eat some food here and there and go to sleep, it drove his foster parents up the walls of their vast house in the suburbs of Donetsk. The plan was to always sneak out at 8.15a.m. and text a friend, issuing him with a challenge to sneak him onto the class’ register as present. Nine times out of ten it worked.

He would return to his bed an hour later after his foster parents had left for their relatively dull jobs in insurance. Yawn, Matko didn’t understand or want a job like that. He wanted to be Nemanja Vidic.

Matko had only, in the past three years, moved to Donetsk with his current foster family who left Mariupol on the coast of the Black Sea to the north for a more prosperous future. Mariupol had been their home for a couple of decades and for Matko since he was nine. He had gained his Ukrainian nationality just two years ago.

He was fifteen now, growing into a strong man—you had to be in Ukraine. He had seen the sights of Europe and was ready to retire into a Ukrainian stalwart role for the national team, swapping allegiances left, right and centre. He had been orphaned off to Italy following his mother’s death when he was six months old—according to his foster parents at least.

Three years later he found himself shipped back to Bosnia, two years after that Northern Serbia. From previous families he had temporarily been a part of, who had only given him a snippet of his entire history, he knew of why he shouldn’t stay in Serbia—or Yugoslavia as it was then.

Seventeen days of wincing as he continued to live the life of a Yugoslav passed him by before he sought solace from neighbouring Romania, hiding in the back of a lorry destined for Constanta, a port town in Eastern Romania—opening up into the Black Sea and therefore his ticket to Mariupol via Zaliznyi Port.

He was re-located to Mariupol within a month or two by authorities, who had matched him with the foster family he had today. Matko spent three or so years roughing it alongside other children, holding his entire life in the hands of empty trucks and homeless adults on the streets of Eastern Europe.

The prize at the end of all of that was Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk, a scout offering a sweat-laden Matko with the contact details and a mocked contract after the match. He had scored the first goal of his junior career in a 9-1 thrashing, capturing another league title as the captain of the club and all that came chasing him was Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk?

They were one of Ukraine’s biggest clubs but he wanted more. A Dynamo Kyiv or a Metalist Kharkiv. Even west Russia’s Kuban Krasnodar could lead to bigger things, especially with Moscow hanging right there in the north.

With his foster parents gleefully willing him on over his shoulder, he gracefully accepted, swearing at his own decision.

[jdoyle9293]

11

January 19, 2011

Kwabena arose for another day at school. He was nonplussed about the whole idea—but he didn’t hate the idea of learning, it was infused with seeing his friends in class and meant he could play football every day in the school’s grounds after the classes were dismissed. In that respect, it was paradise on Earth for a fresh twelve-year old who breathed more football than he did oxygen.

Regardless of that hyperbole, Koude woke up, touched the Manchester United shirt’s crest at the foot of his bed before pulling the slightly tattered and outworn school uniform over his back. He raced into the outdoors, kicking an empty can through the doorway. The stern figure of his mother, all made up in her best and only make up stood before him, a grin stretching from ear to ear as his father appeared from around the corner.

“Son! Happy birthday! Go back into the house and take off that uniform, there’s no school on your birthday!” His father, usually so strict when it came to educational attendance seemed quite relentless in his son’s truancy from school. He obliged, returning with his oversized and outdated Manchester United kit—Cristiano Ronaldo emblazoned on the back.

His father scoffed to himself, “We’ve got a four-hour journey ahead of us for your birthday, you know. Do you still want to wear that?” As the words tumbled out of his mouth, he realised the stupidity of his question, smiling to himself.

“Of course, Dad. Where are we going?” Kwabena replied. His father didn’t answer, just put his arm around him and led him out of the small village and onto the only road leading in and out of the small community. Out of a sparkling black BMW appeared a man with a hat and pristine navy blue suit, Kwabena noticed that he looked hot.

“It’s too warm to be wearing that!” Kwabena laughed, he was always the joker of the playground and thought for a second he had overstepped the mark of a man twenty-five years his senior.

“Don’t be silly, Kwabena! It’s cold in this car!” The chauffer told him.

“But it is never cold in Ghana!” Kwabena shouted, his parents chuckled before bundling him into the front seat of the car, his parents’ faces beaming the entire way into the capital—Accra.

“Dad, Mum—what is in Accra for my birthday?”

“Not just Accra, Kwabena.” The driver winced as he let slip part of the surprise, just moments before taking the road’s exit towards Kotoka International Airport. Kwabena looked overawed, he had never seen an airplane before, never mind a fleet full of them—of course he had learned about them but never had he seen them in the flesh before.

“Kwabena, answer me this question.” His mother whispered as they retrieved the light bags they had packed from the boot. “Who does Lionel Messi play football for?”

“Barcelona, of course!”

“Well, that’s where we’re going.” His father remarked, cue the unrivalled excitement of a twelve-year old boy. Planes, cars and a small bus later—Kwabena and family had entered La Masia.

“Dad, I’m cold.” Kwabena remarked whilst in the office of F.C. Barcelona’s managing directors and academy managers. The loose shirted officials of the club had to laugh as they spoke through a Spanish translator to the Koude family. A lucrative four-year youth contract as well as accommodation, translated school lessons and free flights to and from Ghana sat on the table in front of the Ghanaian family.

“Say yes, Kwabena.” His mother whispered into her son’s ears. He didn’t know what his signature was yet—so he wrote ‘Kwabena 7’ on the dotted line at the bottom of the page.

[jdoyle9293]

12

September 26, 2011

The journey south of the border wasn’t one that Zac Douglas wanted to make—he loved Glasgow deep into his bone marrow. A nationalist, he believed that his hatred was hereditary born into all Scots and one he, unlike others, couldn’t hide.

The north / south divide was all subjective. Those in the Midlands—especially Birmingham, the pit of hell, stuck in the humourless void of being barred from northern wit and charm as well as London affluence and Cornish pride. Those, belonging to Stoke, Nottingham, Leicester, Derby, perhaps Lincoln—this was a tricky one—drew the line just above Watford.

Nonsensical.

Zac’s imagination of the divide cut through South Yorkshire and Derbyshire. His necessity to move into England found him at the southernmost point of this divide—Sheffield. Zac indulged into his devil’s advocate on many occasions, pressing himself to believe in this theory of the divide.

His personal mapping was Sheffield, perhaps to fuel his own pride that he would never live in southern England—he could barely cope with plying his trade in England. On a scale of James Bond to William Wallace, Zac leaned, although not so heavily anymore, towards Wallace.

This particular evening, at the beginning of a promising start to his professional football career, saw his first game under the floodlights of Hillsborough—the under-21’s welcomed Chelsea. Hillsborough hosted the odd Monday night under-21s game when the first team hadn’t torn up the pitch two days previously in their futile exploits at promotion back to ‘where they belonged’ as some would put it in the club.

Zac didn’t feel any pride for wearing an Owl on his chest, when he wasn’t wearing the emblazoned golden Scottish lion, he held the green crest of Celtic’s to his chest. A light blue Owl was defeatist.

Tracing his roots back to Glasgow there was one club, when looking down on England with a minute degree of envy, that he had a hatred for. Until 2003 he had no reason but for a southern cockiness, that is until oil money flooded the British Isles. Finally he had a reason to hate Chelsea Football Club.

As a commanding defensive playmaker and typical Vinnie Jones-style tackler—a comparison given by Wednesday’s under-21’s manager that infuriated him no end. The epitome of southern hatred—bar Vinnie Jones—stood through a pool of players either side of the halfway line was attached to the blue of the Chelsea Lion—Ben Marsden. The typical annoying confident swagger of a London footballer who has everything handed on a silver platter—silver on a bad day. They had met in a pre-season friendly and within four minutes he had flattened him, he hobbled around the pitch for a further 12 minutes before he was hauled off because of an ankle injury.

This time, moments before the kick-off, Zac snarled to himself, he would complete the job. Put him out of the game before the half and, hopefully, for the rest of the season—or his career.

The first meeting between the two came at an academy tournament in the summer of 2009—three months after Zac’s introduction to Sheffield life. Ben chuckled at his Scottish accent so the defensive midfielder’s natural reaction was a stiff knee into his hamstring at a corner kick. A dead leg and a couple of tears—playacting, Zac called it—saw the Scotsman shown off the field and Ben didn’t play for the remainder of the month’s tournament.

Part three of this minor league rivalry saw a re-introduction just seconds onto the clock. Chelsea kicked off, Ben and Zac shared a fleeting glance from opposite sides of the centre circle, Ben visibly winced causing a smile to protrude out of Zac’s pimpled, strong jawline.

Ben received the ball, he timidly moved it onto his right foot, sensing a charging figure in blue and white stripes opposite him. Ben clipped the ball onto the left-wing, a similar clip to his right foot came a second or two after the ball was played erroneously into the near-empty stand. The momentum of Zac’s sliding tackle had sent the English attacking midfielder into a hobbled twirl.

Ben hit the deck, clattering his heel—purposefully or not—into the jaw of Zac’s face. The Scotsman leapt up to tower over a cowering Ben Marsden as the few hundred or so Wednesday fans mid-way up the grandstand to Zac’s left roared in anticipation of a scuffle. Zac chortled in laughter as Ben once again visibly showed his uncomfortableness at sharing a football pitch with his Scottish opponent.

Fourteen minutes later, far too late for Zac’s opinion, Ben would finally forcibly leave the pitch. It followed a long punt up field from Chelsea’s freckled under-21s goalkeeper, a more adequate place for him on a Monday night would be in front of his French homework set by a barmy Anglo-Franco middle-aged teacher at a disappointing, underachieving school.

Ben and Zac magnetised towards the flight of the ball or rather Douglas had trained his eye towards Marsden with the sole intention of sticking his elbow in. Where exactly, had been planned out the day the fixture list had been released. Zac towered over Ben, largely due to his height but partly due to his determination and Ben’s cowardice.

Zac threw his elbow into his English opponent’s cheekbone so hard that his momentum brought him to his knees when he fell as Ben fell directly onto his back. Ben left the field in a horizontal position aided by a stretcher, Zac exited simultaneously but upright.

[jdoyle9293]

13

November 4, 2011

A month and four games into the new A-League season as well as a half dozen injuries to the first team saw Jun fast tracked into the first team for the team’s trip to Adelaide. John van ‘t Schip, the first team manager, interrupted a youth team training session to pull Jun to one side.

“Jun, I have been very impressed with you this year,” John started, “and we want you to travel with us to Adelaide on Thursday night for the game the following day.” Jun’s ankles almost buckled from underneath him in the moist turf through the enormity of the surprise.

“Well, thank you, coach!” Jun whispered, his voice faltering along with his legs as he dashed back onto the training’s 7-a-side game. He had three days to ready himself for the biggest game of his infant career.

“Jun. What are you doing?” The youth coach stepped onto the pitch. “You’ll be with the first team this morning.” A few groans and murmurs from the other youth team players concluded the clipped training session of Jun’s from the youth team. The big league awaited him through the training complex’s door and onto the glossier, more attentive pitch on the other side.

With a skip in his run towards John, his envisioned the dream debut on Friday night.

On the almost two-hour flight across to Adelaide, Jun would be named amongst the eleven starting in the A-League match, in Melbourne Heart’s desperate attempts to revitalise their tepid start of two draws, two losses and tenth place. Jun would assist the first two goals, scoring the third in a 3-2 win—preferably in the 90th minute and from distance.

In reality, Jun—on the flight over no less—was told he would not be in the starting eleven nor on the substitutes bench for the away trip to Adelaide.

“It will be a big learning curve for you.” A coach, one of John’s yes men, informed Jun as he stared blankly onto the dull adjacent painted white brick wall of the away dressing room of Adelaide.

Thirty-five minutes later, after a brief inspection of the pristine Hindmarsh Stadium pitch and a brisk introduction to first team warm-up regimes, Jun was called over to the touchline by the head coach.

“Jun, there’s been a late change to the team. Nick Kalmar has twisted his knee in the warm-up and we need you to fill Kristian Sarkies’ place on the bench as he’s going straight into the eleven.” Jun nodded conformingly as his eyes began to light up—he knew the likeliness of his re-appearance onto the turf was low but anticipation bubbled inside of him, warming his legs.

It was funny, being re-introduced to optimism following Nick’s injury and his consequent promotion to the bench, saw his coach’s comments in the dressing room in a new light. This was a learning curve and at just sixteen years of age, he should have been more grateful for his comments.

When parading the touchline, pulling on the fluorescent yellow bib in the humid Adelaide atmosphere, Jun tapped his coach on the back. “Andy, thanks for your advice earlier.” The coach smiled and showed him to his place on the dugout, shielded by the downpour of rain.

The game was on a knife edge and, after 67 minutes of play, Melbourne Heart had led the game for quite some time, through Brendan Hamill’s first half strike. The first win of the season was seemingly imminent.

Andy leaned across a few seats in the dugout. “Jun, Jason—go and warm up.” Jason Hoffman was a relative newcomer to the A-League, just 21 years old, he began his career in slightly less anonymity, crowned champions of the A-League in his first season at Newcastle Jets three years previously.

For Hoffman, Heart was considered a step down to some but for Jun it was the first rung of a hopefully impressive ladder to look down upon in twenty or so years.

Eleven minutes of light exercises later, the Adelaide contingent inside the stadium finally had something to shout about—it almost made Jun jump as his stretching was interrupted by the equaliser. Spase Dilevski put Adelaide back in with a shout. At that point, Jason and Jun were re-called to the dugout.

Off came the bib and in the following thirteen or fourteen minutes, Jun experienced an outer body experience. To the crowd in attendance, it was probably a period of a sub-par quality of football—nothing to get excited about—but for Jun, despite touching the ball only a couple of occasions, it was something to get excited about. A professional debut and another point on the tally but still Heart rotted in an underachieving tenth place.

Perhaps Jun would be able to change that given half a chance.

[jdoyle9293]

Updates may slow as I decided to snap my finger perfectly in half at work. Steady away...

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14

December 24, 2011

Since Jun’s debut back in November, he had made just one other substitute appearance, coming on in the last minute in a nervy 1-0 home win over Wellington Phoenix, a month to the day of the Chinese playmaker’s professional debut.

The winless start to the season had been curbed, three points from a possible opening fifteen had transformed into six wins in seven matches and third position in A-League. The Christmas heat had transformed Heart’s performance in time for their fierce city rivals, Victory arrival at the AAMI Park just two days before Christmas Day.

It wasn’t anything special in Jun’s calendar—Christmas wasn’t particularly celebrated in Suzhou. Shanghai in the east would usually be bathed in some sort of festivities unengaged by the Hsing family. Melbourne was the polar opposite, a spectacle, well at least when the sun had finally escaped underneath the horizon.

Those decorative lights had been replaced by the floodlights battling for domination with the moon as the second half of Victory’s visit flickered into focus.

On his third appearance in a Heart jersey—Jun had been given the privilege of a starting berth in the line-up. As the referee blew on his whistle for the second half, a revitalised Jun lurched into the action, buoyed by his first goals for the club.

Archie Thompson, most famous for his goal glut against American Samoa for the national side a decade ago, opened the scoring beautifully for Victory in the 21st minute. However, as the opening half wound to a close, so did Victory’s resolve as Jun controlled the match from in behind Heart’s two strikers in a 4-3-1-2 formation.

Deployed as a shadow striker, Jun revelled in his more attacking role, being aided by a lucky deflection as his low driven effort from 18 yards out looped over the downed goalkeeper by the bounce off sliding ankle. Two minutes later, just a shade before the half-time interlude, Jun added his second.

A corner had fallen outside the area to the diminutive Jun, he took two touches, weighing up his options through the sardine tin-like penalty area. Two gaps emerged with his sudden second touch, a reverse pass to the left of the area could find a striker with gallons of room to turn the game on its head.

A more favourable and ambitious option, though, was in the top right hand corner of the net. A few moments later the net was bulging—the thousands of people beyond it erupted in an unbridled passion. Heart took the half-time lead 2-1 through Jun’s sixteen-year old genius.

On the hour mark, Jun made his mark on the Melbourne derby again.

Another corner came into the penalty area and was successfully bundled out of the danger zone. Falling to the Chinese attacker, the opposition were more aware of his powers and charged out to Jun’s feet, 22 yards from goal. With an improper view of his surroundings Jun decided to loft the ball back into the mixer, a wedged lob back into the six-yard box which the Victory defence allowed to bounce.

That became their downfall, as Alex Terra strode onto the ball late on in the day, striking the ball on the half volley as Heart celebrated their impressive turnaround. Despite a late consolation goal from Victory’s Carlos Hernandez, Heart had achieved only their second A-League win over their rivals.

The following night, in their Christmas celebrations no less, Jun and Jason Hoffman were interrupted from their excursion into the city by a tracksuited gentleman at an Adidas store.

“Jun! Well done for yesterday. Jason, nice to meet you.” The polarising greetings surprised Jun somewhat, probably an over keen Heart fan. That is, until he pulled him to one side whilst browsing sportswear on a rack, “Jun, I want to speak with you.” He beckoned him over with his finger. Jason shot Jun a cautionary glance but he continued, holding a finger up to signal that he wouldn’t be a moment.

“Can I invite you to dinner tonight?” Just as Jun was about to reject him, he slipped the footballer a slight look. “I’m not a crazy supporter, don’t worry, I’ve got a business proposition to speak to you with. You’re going to be huge after last night.”

Backed into a corner, Jun held his hands up in his agreement. The mystery was exciting, although it could go either way.

“You must understand that this meeting must be held in the highest privacy. Enjoy your day, I will meet you back here at 6.35p.m., okay?” Jun nodded.

6.35p.m. soon came around, the tracksuit in front of him had transformed into a suit whilst Jun’s attire had been altered only slightly, jeans replaced sweatpants. The suited man led him onto a dinner table alongside another suit, only seemingly more expensive, with an older man hiding behind it.

“Jun, welcome, welcome. What do you suggest we eat tonight? We’ve had rice and crackers ordered already.” Jun skirted around the thinly veiled stereotype from deep inside the well decorated Thai restaurant. He nodded once more. He wanted to evade an uncomfortable situation and return to his aunt and uncle’s house to wrap up Christmas as soon as possible. After all, he was promised a trip to Sydney on the 29th after his impressive performance the previous night.

Somebody whom Jun immediately recognised upon his entrance was one who initially had groaned at his inclusion into the first team. Daeng, engaging in his hometown delicacy through gritted teeth with his presumably costly agent, had been out of action for Heart since the end of last season.

Out of the previous year’s trialists only he and Daeng made the cut with the Thai forward making an immediate impact, making fourteen first team appearances with just the one goal to show for it. He was nearing a return to the first team after his broken foot, something that Jun was sure would eliminate him from the first team set-up, as well as a few more players due to recover from injuries.

Noticing his eyes drifting around the room, the older suit opposite Jun burst into song, “Let’s get down to it, Jun.” Eyebrows raised, Jun silently offered him the table for this seemingly all-important meeting.

“The reason we had to initiate this meeting stealthily was because we are representatives of Melbourne Victory.” Jun’s face flushed a burgundy of shame and embarrassment. “We were impressed yesterday. We want to snatch you away from our rivals. You are the biggest footballing talent ever to come out of China. Nobody has exploded onto a Melbourne derby quite like you, never will. My friend to the right of me is our chief scout, I his agent and hopefully your future agent.”

Jun fell back into the wooden chair in exasperation and confusion. “If I do accept, I will need to be promised the set-up at Victory is twice as good as it is at Heart.” The two suits in front of him chuckled at his hostage negotiations, Daeng behind them continued to glare into his direction. “Your youth players, just like me, need to be better than Heart’s to make sure our—Victory’s—future is better than Heart’s.” They both smiled once more, allowing him to continue with his summation of the deal. “You’ll be giving me better money, I know that, and you’re a club of better stature right now, but I want the confirmation that in three or four years—when I leave for Europe—I can leave behind something special.”

Jun’s bold final throe sent the suits’ mouths almost to the floor. Jun trapped his ambition back into his mouth, almost cursing at his own words.

“You’ve got a deal.” The second rung of the ladder was climbed.

[edtheguy]

Ouch, I hope it heals well (and quickly) - we will be here when you can continue. It'll just give me a chance to re-read straight through from the beginning, which I've been meaning to do anyway.

[jdoyle9293]

I used to take the speed of my typing for granted. This was such a laboured effort in such a small update. Hope it doesn't appear that way in its writing.

========

15

January 23, 2012

“Joao, please come to the dinner table!” The wiry locks of the middle-aged woman jolted halfway down the spine of her unseasonal colourful dress. The dress tickled the patio, heated from beneath the ground as the red clouded sky of Madrid hung an air of anticipation, the warm season was returning.

For Wu, the bloodshot blanket draped over the capital city was symbolic. The powerful red, projected by the sun’s low rise in the early morning instilled a hopefulness back into everything—the Chinese patriotism hadn’t left Wu since he was forced to leave his family despite its cutthroat and relentless methods.

He wondered how they were currently spending the New Year celebrations. For him, 7.37a.m. meant the introduction of a new school week—for them it would be the introduction of large festivities in Suzhou at 2.37p.m. That impaling thought clouded his hope but not his pride.

The clouds that morning were thick but eventually they would thin and reveal a sun shining on Wu in a reunification with his family.

“Joao—get inside, now!” Wu’s foster mother screamed out onto the patio where the Chinese teenager continued to be dazzled by the spectacular show that hovered amongst the Earth. Wu replied sluggishly, trudging his way through the French doors to be met with an English breakfast before a muted Japanese television with German conformity and Bangladeshi attire.

Wu sighed, staring back at the lifeless bowl of sausages, bacon, eggs and toast. The square bowl, accompanied by his foster circular parents’ adjacent plates was the tip of the iceberg—he was completely out of place in this foreign world.

Madrid birthed a cultural freedom Wu had never experienced back at home but he by no means felt free. He wasn’t free of anguish and pain, it jabbed away like a hidden thorn in his shoes. He chewed laboured bites out of his cold, wooden toast, moping it up with a hardened egg yolk. The bacon was crispy—burnt—whilst the sausages represented no particular food group or animal of this oftentimes wonderful planet. It took Wu thirty-seven minutes to swallow the atrocious, gloopy mess fed to him by those who were supposed to care for him and even then there was over half of it left.

“Mum,” Wu winced as he allowed the word to fall from his mouth, “it is Chinese New Year today.” He whispered sheepishly.

“Yeah? What shall we do to celebrate?”

“I could decorate the house for when you come back from work,” Wu noted the puzzled glances from his carers before sizing them up, “you see, in China, we have the day off for New Year. I think it’s only fair.” Wu retreated into his chair, anticipating their barrage of responses.

“Not this again. Joao you say this every year. You are a Spanish boy, you’re not Chinese anymore.” His foster mother’s knife and fork fell to the table with a metallic clatter.

“Really? The children at school seem to know I’m Chinese.” With that minor burst of emotions, Wu sieved roughly 0.00003% of his negative feelings about his xenophobic and inherently racist classmates onto the dining room table. He solemnly excused himself from the table, waiting until he had adjourned himself from breakfast and evacuated the floor before releasing his tears.

Five minutes later, they were subdued via a singular squeak from his mobile phone.

“Wu—I’ll meet you outside so we can go to school ” Li—the only other Chinese boy he now knew. Of course, the plan was to venture further into the fringes of the City, walk beyond his school and into Li’s house with his parents to celebrate the New Year properly.

Wu swung open the door excitedly to see Li—football in hand—waiting for him on the doorstep. Exciting news followed.

“We’ve got a place on our Sunday team; do you want to join?” Wu didn’t even need to open his mouth.

[jdoyle9293]

16

September 8, 2012

Eva stared into the dark cabinet of what might have been. The sparkling, light blue Adidas Predator boots had never been worn for its proper use—to score goals, to save goals, to defend goals, to create goals. The only thing she had created by buying these out of her birthday money was the prolonged heartache of never being able to play football at the highest level.

In Brisbane there were plenty of youth girls football leagues, only it didn’t share the competitiveness that the boy’s sport had—or any sport should have.

One day back in the summer of discontent—around late February her Uncle Justin had finally cottoned onto her depression. She pointed her in the direction of a boy’s football team at the other side of the city and a website devoted to items and accessories for hiding her womanly assets as a gain of masquerading as a male.

The Brisbane Eagles junior football team, who shared their premises with the Hockey and Lacrosse teams accepted her without hesitation and that year—in August—she had filled out the necessary paperwork with the help of her Uncle in the car park of the sports club.

“Only one problem—I haven’t figured out a name yet, obviously I’m going to keep Bleasdale as my surname but calling myself Evan sounds a bit cheap and other people might recognise me.” Eva always wept in her uncle’s car before he snatched the pen and paper from her lap and chose her name for her.

“You can name yourself after somebody special and integral to the start of your football career.” Eva nodded and found the penned horror at the foot of the page.

Signed: Justin Bleasdale, Date: August 21, 2012

“Justin? What sort of name is that?” Eva’s Uncle smiled towards his niece in a smug satisfaction that he would forever live through his niece—should she become a success story.

“What’s wrong with it?”

“No offence, I don’t like the name. On me. It’s a perfectly fine name,” Justin relaxed in his seat after the initial ‘no offence’ clause of their conversation was immediately breached, “but I just don’t want the name attached to me. Have you got any Tipp-Ex or a new form?” Justin gleefully shook his head before pointed at the tracksuited gentleman approaching the Subaru.

“Coach’s here!”

“Hi,” the coach took a look towards Eva’s registration papers, “Justin! Welcome to the Eagles, training’s starting in ten minutes, I hope you’ve got all your gear!” Eva stepped out of the car in the full kit of her beloved Chelsea F.C. instantly feeling the sharp wind against her non-existent hairs on her legs. She ignored it, the clattering of the studs on the underside of her blue Adidas Predators sounded off around the club’s premises. She wiped the floor with every single defender in that first training session and with four pre-season sessions completed, the metamorphosis into a male footballer was almost complete.

The U-17 Brisbane Eagles FC side had an upcoming friendly, a friendly that had approached too fast for the hairs on Eva’s legs to comparably grow alongside her teammates. She had sacrificed her dwindling love life for football—an appropriate sacrifice she noted as she stepped out as the No.10 in the opening pre-season game against an Under-19 squad from Gold Coast, Southport to be exact.

The hairs, or lack of her legs, were rendered irrelevant just a couple of hours later as she hammered seven past the 19 year-old goalkeeper in front of her. Two diving headers and a 25-yard curled effort into the far post were the pick of the seven, earning her entry into a conversation with a pitch side supporter at the full-time whistle.

“Tell me…—”

“Justin.” Eva replied nervously.

“Justin. How do you find the time to practice scoring those seven goals and give players the run around who are two age groups higher than you and shave your legs regularly enough to show no signs of puberty?” The middle-aged tracksuited man chortled to Eva on the touchline as she grabbed her possessions. Her chuckle became indistinguishable behind the beetroot blush she had given the old man.

“You’d fit right in at my club!” The old man raised his voice as Eva attempted to get as far away from the pitch and a potential unveiling as quickly as possible.

“Brisbane Roar.”

The dull murmur of the young wannabee footballers and their parents and coaches died at the click of the old man’s dentures, as he rattled off his job title: “Chief Scout—Brisbane Roar—can I please have a word with your parents?”

Uncle Justin was hauled down to Gold Coast to pick her niece up, although not before he had completed a minor side mission.

“Dad—” Fatherless, and gay, Justin recoiled in horror before quickly assuming his character in the setup. “This is the chief scout from Brisbane Roar—he wants me to join their first team—this afternoon.”

After a trip down to the Southport coast and into Surfers Paradise, they snacked in a restaurant whilst finalising the details of Eva’s contract with Brisbane Roar. As the sun settled on a picture perfect view and the Scout had bid goodnight to his satisfied clientele, they both shared a relaxing sigh before the looming, dreaded question was finally addressed.

“When are we going to tell your parents, Eva?”

[jdoyle9293]

Successful surgery - heavy cast on my right hand so will be writing one update a day and sticking it straight on here. I prefer to get ahead of myself but at least I'll be able to get back to one update per day. It's a long one, this story.

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17

September 14, 2012

It was of no surprise to Jun that Melbourne Heart didn’t want to free one of their hottest young properties to their city rivals but Jun made it his business to radically transfer his allegiances. He felt slightly tinged with guilt and treachery but, as his uncle reminded him, “you have to do what is best for your career, Junny!”

He was right—never wrong, in fact, like most school teachers—Victory were a more rounded club; better players, better facilities, better coaches and better prospects. In their short history they had been crowned champions of the A-League twice (in 2007 and 2009) before finishing in the runner-up position the following season.

Although Heart had finished in sixth place—two above Victory and in the Finals Series—Victory held more promise. They had made the Champions League on three occasions, albeit without progressing past the group stages, but from the start of the 2012-13 season they had Jun.

He had fuelled Heart’s push into sixth place and he would do the same for Victory, he and the management were confident of this.

Another thing to take confidence from for the Chinese attacker was the experience, it would assist him from the volatility of the Melbourne football supporters. For the rest of his career they would be bipolar—one half baying for his blood whilst the others in full support of him.

The wage hike added to this new found confidence, also finding him a never before lived in apartment just ten minutes’ walk from the club’s training complex.

The old cliché tells you that money doesn’t buy you happiness and as Jun sat on his beige corner sofa in front of a 52” wall-mounted television, he couldn’t help but think about his parents, think about Wu.

Where were they and how were they coping?

Jun battled in his mind whether to ever return to China—if he got a call-up from the national team, he would have to. He could apply for Australian citizenship. It would be harder to forge a regular place in the starting line-up but it was a challenge that needed to be risked.

One thing, one person stopped him doing so. Wu. What if he had found a suitable family in China and got back into football? The partnership between them would be devastating—it excited him, one of the few things that did apart from his slightly altered life in Melbourne.

A troubling thought couldn’t help but pierce his brain, though. There was a possibility that he had been farmed out to a foreign land, stripped of his Chinese heritage and language.

He could end up being an international opposition. The thought plunged Jun into a seismic depression.

[jdoyle9293]

18

September 15, 2012

Eva sat at the base of a tree, almost skeletal after having its leaves annually ravaged some time ago. The air was warmed yet Eva remained frosty amongst the fiery spring shrapnel that had waned in her back garden. She had wailed for so long under her favourite tree that day.

Her history, gender and, therefore, identity was tied to the locks that she had shed that morning. The decision had hung in the balance for an eternity—Eva had to commit to her newfound charade of a gender by shaving her head or risk the truth seeping out through the well-conditioned and shampooed auburn hair she once prided herself on.

She had only signed her Brisbane Roar contract seven days ago but the anxiety of not confessing that fact to her parents ensured time moved glacially. There was a first team friendly tomorrow against Sydney F.C. and after just two terrifying training sessions, Eva was in the squad.

After just a week in professional football, Eva’s hair was practically escaping her out of stress anyway.

Night was slowly replacing day and soon her parents would be back from work—their daughter stripped of her hair and identity and going to play a man’s sport.

“But it’s not just a man’s sport,” Eva reminded her father one evening after teasing him with the idea of joining a women’s football team. “I’m that good that I could probably join a man’s team, what do you reckon?”

It was safe to say that Eva’s testing of the waters hadn’t given her much hope for a subsequent confession of what her and her Uncle Justin had conspired to do. They weren’t uptight, Eva’s parents, just traditional and—for the modern state of play—that word might as well have been interchangeable with ‘archaic’; a better suited word to describe them.

A shaved head on a young girl of her age “wasn’t right” or “didn’t suit her”—how would they know? She had never shaved her head before. She was aiming more for Sinead O’Connor and the Ellen Ripley transformation in Alien3 more than anything. At least Ripley was independent and a late 20th century icon for feminism.

Eva Bleasdale could be her 21st century counterpart, only illegally and real and in the world of sport.

Time was moving even slower because her whimsical mind, ideas that she hadn’t yet shared with her Uncle, was one that would directly involve him. Eva speculated that her parents would blame Justin for forcing his “unique ways” upon her, allowing the stench of homophobia to rise above the surface once more.

The pain of ‘traditional’ parents.

Regular as clockwork, her parents would return at 5.21p.m. or a minute either side of that. Luckily, or unluckily, for Eva, they had uncharacteristically arrived two minutes later than usual—their tardiness might have signified their transformation into degenerates?

Stood at the entrance of the house before three overhanging suitcases and rucksacks tying the laces on her electric purple Nike trainers was a shaved Eva.

“Oh my god, Geoff—look at this!” Eva’s mum winced at the image of her own daughter stood opposite her—as though she was stuck in a nightmarish reflection of herself.

“Jesus Christ, Eva, what have you done to yourself? You look like a prison inmate.” Eva brushed off the offensive comment from her father before weighing up the situation silently, her vision blurred with a putrid rage.

“I’m going to stay with Uncle Justin. Oh, and last week I signed for Brisbane Roar. Try to be proud of me.” Eva hauled her three cases through the threshold of the door onto the driveway as a taxi screeched to a halt in the cul-de-sac’s narrow road.

“By the way, it’s the men’s team. Look out for me on the television.” Her mother’s jaw sunk, so her mouth could house a thousand flies, as she watched her only child struggle her luggage into the boot of the taxi unaided.

“I’m happy for you now, Dad, happy that you’ve finally got the son you always wanted.” As Eva pulled away in the front passenger seat of the taxi she finally viewed the realism of the situation. Not a single fight was put up by her parents, they barely flinched never mind helped her with her bags or attempted to stop her. Good riddance.

Now, all she hoped for was the accepting embrace of her Uncle.

[jdoyle9293]

19

October 13, 2012

The scorching Brisbane sun merged sweat fluidly from Eva’s trimmed hair onto her ear lobes. The testosterone overfilled the room with the exception of the game’s man (player) of the match.

Her one thought at that time as dozens of men prepared their post-match routines varying from entering the team showers and warm down massages—Eva instead stared terrifyingly ahead her, devoid of the usual elation brought on by the combination of a man of the match performance and a team victory.

Arms pricked with microscopic hairs, on end due to the sheer terror of potentially unveiling her gender in front of thirty or so teammates and co-workers.

Through her blurred eyes, a figure tapped her on the head in congratulatory mode as the majority of the team had flocked towards the home dressing room’s showers.

“Justin. Justin!” An arm waved in front of Eva, forcing her to focus her eyes towards the jubilant assistant manager kneeling in front of her. “Get your kit off and get in the shower!”

Eva held her hand up, mumbling: “My Dad wants to see me, one second, Earl.” Whether or not her assistant manager’s name was Earl, Eva kicked her boots off, replacing them with Adidas slippers and trotted off through the threshold of the open dressing room door, laced in rust due lack of financial power, consequential of a lack of footballing superiority.

The gluttony of top flight modern, lucrative football afforded her to leave her belongings behind—Eva took her suspiciously empty wash bag, leaving behind her boots, shin pads and holdall that were all replenished every match day.

But how often could she maintain this duck and cover approach to the post-game shower? An underwear-clad shower or Jacuzzi would arise suspicions as would vanishing through the back door once she had an opportunity.

As Eva exited through the bowels of the Suncorp Stadium on a wave of her dishonest story in order to rush back home to her Uncle’s house, she attempted to relive the past two hours to revitalise the joy in her life.

Melbourne Victory were the visitors for Eva’s A-League debut, the stadium’s underbelly appeared to vibrate in concurrence with her heightened tensions as the atmosphere bubbled away calmly in the tunnel. Twenty of her teammates and opposition stood before her with Victory’s goalkeeper—a face of stone—stood to her left-hand side.

She ruled out the fact that he wasn’t trying to size her up immediately due to his sheer concentration. That concentration was broken in the fourth minute as his central defender lent him a loose pass but the Melbourne Victory goalkeeper’s poor first touch allowed just one stroke of Eva’s right boot to gift the Roar supporters a real chance to roar as Eva leapfrogged the advertising hoardings to celebrate the opener in a whimsical jubilation.

Fifteen minutes later, Brisbane had gone three up and Eva added a second to her debut tally. They finished the match as 5-0 winners but with the final whistle came an overcoming dread.

The mandatory nature of the arduous post-match routines, Eva wished, would dissipate soon. Maybe if she fired them towards an A-League trophy and Australia to a World Cup she would gain immunity of a post-match shower through virtue of being a national hero.

She didn’t hold out much hope for that.

[jdoyle9293]

20

October 13, 2012

Behind enemy lines, Jun held his sunglasses firm against the draught of air sweeping through the tunnel. Luckily, the game had not been selected as part of the Australian television schedule so the extensive glare of world football wasn’t as intense as it sometimes could have been.

Jun met all of the players in the dressing room, without much of an introduction or reaction. The lads at Victory didn’t need to know what was going on at the club across the city—they were superior.

“I don’t think a lot of them recognised me at first.” Jun leaned into his agent in a lofty section of the stadium as Brisbane roared into a two goal lead. Jun’s agent scoffed whilst retaining his attention towards his mobile phone.

Jun sunk deeper into the cheap plastic seating as Victory surrendered their third, fourth and fifth goals. What had he joined?

The atmosphere in the dressing room after the game was disjointed, some of the players holding court whilst others passively aggressively hammering their boots against the floor of the away dressing room.

Managerless, it was chaotic, an entirely alien feeling for Jun he camouflaged into an alcove of the dressing room.

“Come on Jun, let’s call it a night.” Jun silently agreed to his agent’s proposition, he didn’t belong in a such a place. Maybe in a couple of years he would adapt to a new style of coaching, management and atmosphere; a new philosophy.

The corridor was engulfed with victorious noise. Blocked off by the silhouettes of partying Brisbane players, studs clapping along with the beat of the sporting hymn that rattled around the claustrophobic rectangle.

A monstrous cough from Jun’s agent parted the corridor’s sea of players biblically. Holding the match ball, a player attributed with the number thirty-six whispered an apology as Jun tiptoed through the bulk of winning players.

[jdoyle9293]

Hand still not fully recovered from surgery, hence the wider-spaced and smaller updates

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21

November 14, 2012

The Qantas aircraft’s first class cabin had a whiff of a dentist—every square centimetre was freshly washed. Jun was Beijing bound in the typically sleepy November friendly international matches and for his first call-up he was sprinkled with a free first class flight from Melbourne.

Jun’s stomach turned as the Chinese land slipped below him, the first time he had returned to China since his self-exile some years ago.

He re-attached himself to the Earth via the vast tarmac of the Beijing airport’s runway, a forty-minute ride after a non-descript tedious wait at the baggage carousel. The news of Jun’s call-up must have reached his brother and his family but a warm welcome he did not receive as a typically pale white Beijing taxi, scribbled with capitalist advertisements, met him in the underbelly of the airport.

After a long and inexpensive slump in the back of the fabric-clad ancient taxi, Jun arrived at the team headquarters in an unfashionable style with over fashionable time-keeping to boot. He was a day early.

With that day, he utilised it with typically understated 21st century Chinese vitriol, passive-aggressively exercising until his body gave out in the hotel’s free gym. As he laid, alone in the dark with the Beijing skyline peppered with anti-environmental bulbs, attempting to pierce the thick smog to greet Jun in the blurred Beijing suburbs.

With the probably unpopulated swimming pool almost 70 floors below his bed, Jun considered pencilling in a three a.m. swim but couldn’t avoid the thought that had been lodged in his cranium like a bullet since his flight took off from Melbourne almost twenty-one hours ago.

> Where was Wu?

> Did Wu know where he was?

and more morbidly as he sunk into the memory foam bedding;

> Was Wu still alive?

Even in the Bird’s Nest Stadium celebrating an equaliser against New Zealand in a 1-1 draw on his international debut—his mind wouldn’t least him forget his brother’s potential turmoil.