The Bare Bum Gang and the Football Face-Off Read Online Free PDF Page B

decided that Jamie should go in goal, because he had some gloves. They weren’t proper goalkeeping gloves just some woolly ones his granny had knitted for him. One of the gloves had six fingers and the other one had four, becausehis granny had something called dementia, which is a disease that makes you count up fingers all wrong. I suppose there might have been some logic to it because altogether there were the right number of fingers, just divided up wrong.

    Jamie complained about being the goalkeeper, but he didn’t want to lend his gloves to anyone else, so he was stuck with the job. During the penalty practice he didn’t let in a single goal, which sounds like he must have been a good choice for goalie until you find out it was really because every penalty missed the target completely, except for mine, which dribbled to a stop before it reached the line.
    â€˜Let’s just hope it doesn’t go to penalties,’ said The Moan, and we all agreed.

Chapter Ten
A SURPRISING PROPOSAL
    Later that evening, after tea, there was a knock at the door. We have a bell, but about two years ago it got stuck while it was ringing and it rang for two days before the battery ran out, and it hasn’t worked since. I was watching a DVD called
Great Footballing Bloopers
, all about funny things that had gone wrong during football games. I had a notebook and a pencil and I was making notes about things not to do, like blasting the ball into your own net, jumping into the crowd to kick spectators who had said mean things about you, head-butting other playersright in front of the ref, etc., etc.
    â€˜It’s for you, Ludo,’ said Mum.
    I went to the back door. It was a boy I didn’t really know called Carl.
    â€˜Can I be in your team for the big match on Saturday?’ he said.

    This was rather strange, because Carl, although he lived on the new estate, quite often hung around with Dockery. He was big and lanky and he was one of the best players in the school team. His hair was always hanging over the side of his face, so you could only ever see one eye. That made him look a bit shifty, but I always thought you shouldn’t judge people by how they look. You have to take into account other things, like whether or not they smell of smoky bacon, and also how nice they are.
    â€˜What do you want to be in our team for?’ I asked back. ‘We’re probably going to get marmalized, you know.’
    â€˜I can’t stand Dockery,’ he said. His one visible eye wasn’t looking at my face but at the middle of my chest. ‘He’s always boasting about things. He never shuts up about how great he is and how he’s got every single decent toy that’s ever been invented. Whatever you get for your birthday or Christmas, he always says, “Yeah, I’ve got that already.” And he never lets you play with them.’
    â€˜That’s true,’ I said. ‘OK then. We’re having our last practice session tomorrow.’
    â€˜You should call it a training session, not a practice session,’ said Carl. ‘Calling it a practice session makes it sound stupid, like you’re practising the violin or something.’
    I didn’t really like the way he said that, sort of sneering. But he was probably right. ‘Training session’ did definitely sound a bit more sporty. And I didn’t want to put him off. With Carl on our side we actually had a small chance of not getting massacred.
    â€˜OK, come tomorrow after school for the
training
session.’

Chapter Eleven
TACTICS
    I did my best to avoid Dockery the next day at school. At morning break I saw him and his gang playing football in the playground. They were kicking the ball around to each other. They weren’t that good, just big and strong, and they could kick the ball really hard. You could hear the ball hit the brick wall at the end of the playground with a
WHHHAAAANNNG
noise that made your