T.J. and the Hat-trick Read Online Free PDF Page A

good.’
    His dad laughed. ‘Good? That lot? You’ll be lucky if you ever make a team out of them. The tall kid’s not bad, and that red-haired boy, but I reckon you could run rings round them. That girl’s a real goal-hanger. She never moves.’
    ‘It’s only our first practice,’ TJ said. ‘We’ll get better.’ He picked up the ball and ran back to the game, leaving his family shaking their heads.
    Five minutes later Mr Wood called them all together. ‘Well done, everyone,’ he said. ‘You’ve worked really hard. But if you think I’m going to tell you you’re great footballers, well, I’m not.’
    TJ’s heart sank. He looked at the others. They all looked as fed up as he felt.
    ‘None of you can pass the ball to save your lives,’ Mr Wood continued, ‘and some of you don’t even seem to know which way you’re supposed to shoot. But on the other hand, it seems to me that you’ve had a raw deal. There’s been no PE for ages here, and where your football pitch should be there’s a strip of grass that looks like it’s been dug up by a herd of giant moles.’
    They all laughed, and TJ suddenly felt a little flicker of hope.
    ‘I can turn you into a team,’ Mr Wood said. ‘But only if you’re all prepared to work harder than you’ve ever worked in your lives. I don’t know yet if you’ll be any good, but you
will
be a team, and then Parkview School will have something to be proud of for a change. How about it? Are you up for it?’
    TJ suddenly saw the excitement glittering in Mr Wood’s blue eyes. It seemed to flicker in the air. He could feel it, running through him like electricity, and he realized that the others were feeling the same thing. As he walked home with his family. his dad said, ‘You really want to do this, don’t you, TJ?’
    TJ nodded.
    ‘Well, I did see one good thing out there tonight – your Mr Wood. He seems like he knows what he’s doing.’
    ‘I told you,’ TJ said.
    ‘Yeah, you did. And we met quite a few of your mates’ mums and dads while we were there. Nice, friendly people. I reckon if we all got together we could really make things start to happen in this place. But listen, that Mr Wood. Where’s he from?’
    ‘I don’t know, Dad,’ said TJ. ‘Why?’
    ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Mr Wilson said. ‘I just had the feeling I’d seen him somewhere before, that’s all.’

C HAPTER 9
    IT WAS THE following Monday morning when TJ arrived in the classroom and spotted Rob writing in his notebook. ‘What are you doing now?’ he asked him.
    ‘I’m finishing the stats from the training last week.’
    ‘I didn’t see you there.’
    ‘I didn’t
want
anyone to see. They’d just make fun of me if they knew.’
    ‘I bet they wouldn’t. Why don’t you show them?’
    Before Rob could say anything, TJ had called Rafi and Jamie over. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘Rob’s analysed our training session. It’s brilliant.’
    ‘It doesn’t need analysing though, does it,’ Jamie said. ‘We were rubbish.’
    ‘You have to know exactly why you were rubbish,’ Rob said seriously. ‘Look, Rafi, this is you.’ Little black arrows darted about all over the diagram of the pitch. ‘I estimate that you ran about one kilometre in five minutes.’

    ‘That’s amazing,’ said Rafi, staring at the picture.
    ‘Yeah,’ said TJ. ‘It’s clever, isn’t it? Rob does this for every game he watches.’
    ‘Rob’s a bit weird,’ Rafi said. ‘Everyone knows that. What I meant was, it’s good that I ran all that way. I must be fast!’
    ‘You have to run in the right direction,’ said Jamie. ‘Half the time you don’t even know which way you are running.’
    ‘I made one little mistake, that’s all,’ Rafi retorted. ‘Hey, what’s that?’
    ‘It’s Tulsi,’ Rob said. ‘It’s not perfect because I was watching Rafi most of the time, but I think it’s about right.’ They all looked at Rob’s diagram and laughed. All of the arrows were in a very small