17. Robbie
ROBBIE
When I was nineteen, I scored the winning goal in my first Champion’s League final.
The crowd was so loud, I had a fleeting worry that the stands would collapse, and they’d all come rushing onto the pitch.
I had taken a lap to listen to the cheers before my teammates jumped all over my body, crushing me in a group hug filled with joy and relief and ecstasy.
I got addicted to that high, chased it for the next ten years of my career but nothing ever compared to the feeling of scoring that goal.
The day my ACL tore, it was a club friendly.
It wasn’t a final, it wasn’t a major game, just a strained ligament and an overextended lunge at the wrong time.
And the high I’d been chasing for my entire life turned to tar in my throat.
Eight months of recovery plus endless weeks of intense physical therapy, when all I wanted to do was get back on the pitch.
My doctors could only give me vague timelines, and I had to watch as my team carried on the season without me, whilst trade rumors started circulating online, and fans wondered if I’d ever be able to play again.
I ignored my family, ignored my friends, letting the darkness consume me as I laid at home replaying the snap I heard in my dreams every night.
It was only when my mother knocked on my door and opened my curtains did I start to let a little bit of the darkness fade. She bundled me into her car and I went from languishing in a London penthouse to sleeping in the childhood bedroom I’d spent so little time in as a kid.
I hated it to start with. Hated being fussed over and coddled like a baby when I’d been on my own since I was seven years old, and the Academy trained me full time.
I wasn’t used to being around my own mother.
Eventually, my brother Iwan started visiting more, bringing the kids around whenever they could.
I was basically a stranger to those children.
I’d met them both when they were born, but birthdays and Christmases were few and far between.
My five year old nephew, Sammy, didn’t really know what to do with me at first, when I was laid up on the sofa with my mother’s blanket wrapped around my lap.
He would come and sit with me while his sister was entertaining the family in the other room.
Sammy was always quiet. He’d been almost completely non-verbal until he was two.
I had helped Iwan and Gwen afford a child psychologist who officially diagnosed him with just being a shy kid who only speaks when he has something to say.
Sammy would come and sit quietly on the other side of the sofa, legs folded beneath him as we watched the sports channel.
It only took a few days or so for him to start shuffling a little bit closer to me, until eventually he was curled up by my side and quietly asking what we had been watching for the last week.
Watching it was one thing, but I didn’t really want to talk about football.
It was tainted by my injury and everything I’d lost. But when Sammy softly asked why the referee handed out a red card, I realized that I’d never even heard his voice before.
It felt like a gift that I got to share with him.
I didn’t make it a big deal, didn’t fill the rest of the family in on what we were talking about.
It was just our thing. And eventually, talking about football didn’t cause me so much agony.
I found myself counting down the days until I was back on my feet, not so I could get back on the pitch with a team who didn’t want me, but so I could take Sammy to the back garden and have a kick about.
Once I did, I started to become part of my family again.
I wasn’t the outlier—the black sheep who sent a card at Christmas.
I was the one the kids would run to when they arrived, the one my mother asked to trim the hedges, and the one down the pub with my dad and brother watching the rugby.
It was normal.
Until I got the all clear to go back to full training, and my agent told me no one was calling apart from one team in America.
“Here’s the training schedule for the next two months,” Paul says as he hands around a stack of papers to the team huddled in the film room. We’ve been watching film of the Nevada Rain for the last few hours. They’re definitely…a team. “You’ll notice that there’s a break over the weekend.”
I let the chair I’ve been swinging back in land on the floor with an audible thump.
“A what?” I ask, incredulously. Half a week without practice or a game is almost unheard of. I snatch a schedule, the paper crinkling in my hand. How are we supposed to be a coherent team if we don’t spend every day practicing?
Paul shrugs. “Mr Hamilton has insisted that there’s a break in between this week's game and the next.” He turns back to the wider room.
“But there’ll be no partying. You’re adults, and we trust that you’ll keep up your regime because we’ll be back on Tuesday full-pelt, ready for the game with Seattle that weekend. ”
There are shuffles of excitement around the room.
We’re dismissed, and Santi claps his hand on my shoulder, shaking me with a level of elated energy that I can’t muster up to meet. “This is great. I’m going to take my girls to Disneyland. Maria’s wanted to go for months, but Carmen wanted me to be there with them.”
“Nice,” I mumble.
“What about you?”
For a moment, I’m confused. I’m going to stay here and take advantage of an empty training center. Does he really think I’m going to go off on a trip? Who the hell would I even go with?
Visions of Cassie in her little green bikini on her surfboard appear behind my eyes and I blink to wipe the image away.
“You need to live a little, bro,” Santi tells me. “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. What’s the point of life if you’re not living it?”
His words ring in my ears as I head to the gym.
The point of my life is to play football.
That’s what I’ve been put on this Earth to do.
I don’t take breaks, and I’ve certainly never played for a team that enforces breaks.
Sure, I’ve been known to travel a bit in the off season, but otherwise I have a routine and I stick to it.
Frustration follows me as I stay in the gym far longer than the other guys, who are all happy to take advantage of an unexpected free weekend.
I’m on an exercise bike, legs pumping and sweat dripping into my eyes, when a large hand claps on my back and nearly knocks me out of the seat.
I pull my headphones out to find Hamilton stood beside me with a grin on his face.
“King, how you been, son?”
I use a towel to wipe my damp face. “I’m, uh, good, sir.”
“Excellent. I’ve not seen you in the lounge much recently.”
I nod, gesturing to the gym. “Focusing on the game.”
“Good man,” he chortles. “You heading anywhere nice on your break?”
I want to tell him no. I’ll be training like the rest of the team should be doing instead of galavanting around the country. “I know it’s not the norm to have a long weekend off in the season,” he continues, “but it’s my team and if I say you deserve a break, you deserve one.”
Well…hell. I can’t really argue with that. I think of Santi’s grin when he spoke about taking his daughter to Disneyland.
“It’s…very generous, sir.”
“Where are you off? London? That’s where your family is, no?”
I shake my head. “Wales.”
“Close enough.”
Different country.
“My Cassie is going over for a few days actually. She’s talking about going commercial, again.
” He rolls his eyes as if flying the same way as 99% of travelers do is some sort of teenage rebellion, though I guess for a man who makes more money in his sleep than my entire family would in a lifetime, it might feel a bit beneath you.
“If you’re already heading that way, I’ll get her to take the jet. ”
I furrow my brow, not following him at all.
“She has this whole thing about the jet being bad for the environment.” He waves his hand. “I think sharing the same air as car salesmen and suburban mothers is bad for my environment, but she won’t be told.”
I open my mouth to protest but quickly remember that this man is my boss.
“It’s settled, you’ll take the jet.” He sends me a blinding white smile as he checks his phone. “My assistant will send you the details.”
With that, he claps me on the shoulder and strides out of the gym, answering his phone with a sharp, “Hamilton.”
What the hell just happened?