Chapter 3
Kai
Stepping onto the brU field for the first time was like entering a whole other fucking universe with its own gravitational set of rules. Rules making me feel as though I had wandered into a ballet class for ants.
The turf practically glowed; it was too green to be real, radiating the kind of energy suggesting someone had paid a fortune for it, so I had better not mess it up.
I drew a slow breath through my nose, trying to steady my stomach.
Nerves had a sour taste to them — all metal and anticipation — like I might chuck before we even started.
Thirty blokes were already on the field, moving with the fluidity and confidence of people who had been doing this their entire lives. They yelled, clapped, and clashed.
Some were already jogging in circles with absurd ease, snapping imaginary lines of laser-like precision.
I tightened my helmet strap, gave my cleats another pointless tug, and told myself I belonged here. I hadn’t come all this way to look like some idiot tourist who’d taken a wrong turn onto the field.
My body was ready, but my brain still lagged a step behind, which wasn’t exactly new.
Like they always used to tell me. Your legs are keen. Brain? Not so much.
My rugby instincts buzzed under my skin, waiting for the whistle to blow and the chaos to begin. But football wasn’t chaos — not the way I knew it. It was controlled, timed, and angled.
Stop, start, think.
Every movement was planned in advance. I could already feel the itch of impatience building.
Doubt started nipping at me
Christ, what was I thinking?
Oh right, Tāne talked me into it.
Coach Whitaker.
It was what I had to call him now. His whistle cut through the air, sharp enough to slice the morning clean in half. His hard gaze swept the field and when it landed on me, I was struck by the familiar mixture of comfort and dread.
The man who'd convinced me to spend this year abroad with him, insisting new experiences would benefit me and boost my rugby skills, was now observing my every move with the keen eye of a scout.
He believed the more skills and knowledge you had, the better you would become at your chosen sport.
I’d never wanted anything more than to play rugby professionally, and if this would give me the edge, I’d be forever grateful. If it didn't, though, he’d have to listen to my griping until the end of his days.
I’d come here to earn this spot, not ride in on nepotism. But even so, I couldn't suppress the nervous flutter in my stomach. It was day one of summer training camp, and I had a lot to prove — to myself and to these guys.
I was used to heat — Queensland summers could melt you if you stood still for too long — but this was different.
This was wet heat, thick as soup, the kind that clung to your ribs and made every breath feel like work.
Back home, even when it scorched you, there was always a breeze.
Here, it just pressed down heavily and stubbornly.
“Laps first,” Coach barked, his whistle clenched between his teeth.
Righto. No easing in, then.
The turf sank beneath my feet, soft and springy — almost too perfect. My legs moved, but they didn’t thank me for it.
My new boots rubbed my heels and my grip on the gloves was slippery with sweat. Tāne had made me binge-watch endless tapes of American Football games before we got here — routes, formations, stops and starts — so I’d learn the rules, objectives and responsibilities of the positions.
He’d done the same himself, brushing up on football even after decades of playing rugby. This proved no matter how good you were at one sport, the other demanded its own rhythm.
By the third lap, sweat was pooling at my collar and running down my spine. The other blokes were still chatting mid-stride, like this was nothing.
They were already used to this air, while I was still learning how not to drown in it. I focused on my breathing, counting steps, trying to find the tempo that wouldn’t kill me.
Next, we moved on to lunges and arm circles. I over-rotated on the first one and nearly toppled. The linebacker next to me, Reece I reckon his name was, caught my stumble and smirked.
“You good there, bro?”
“Yeah, mate.” I brushed it off. I couldn’t blame him for taking the piss. If he’d rocked up to a rugby pitch back home, I’d have done the same.
But he wasn’t just laughing — he was measuring. Seeing what the outsider was made of. Fair enough. I’d do the same if I were in his shoes.
Then we moved on to push-ups. My arms burned, but I finally started to find my rhythm. Small victories adding up, one repetition at a time. I caught Tāne's eyes sweeping across the field, cool and unreadable. Coach mode.
Uncle or not, I wasn’t getting any freebies. I wouldn’t want them anyway but it was them I’d need to convince.
The sun hadn’t changed by the next morning, but the air somehow felt heavier and denser. It was the kind of humidity that didn’t just sit on your skin, it crawled under it.
Reminded me of preseason back home, when the pitch was soft and steaming underfoot and the sweat burned your eyes even before the whistle blew.
Except this wasn’t home. The field here smelled different — of turf and rubber rather than mud and eucalyptus — and everything moved in tighter, neater patterns. Even the chaos was rehearsed.
When practice kicked off, I could feel every muscle in my body, as if someone had redrawn their borders overnight. My legs knew power and my shoulders knew contact, but the rhythm was off.
Rugby was fluid, almost like a storm you learned to surf. It was a language of reaction. You saw the space, took it and trusted someone else to cover for your mistakes. My instincts screamed at me to drive through, to attack the gap, to flow with the motion.
Football, though, was a different beast entirely. It didn’t want movement; it wanted control. It wanted you to think before your body even remembered how to move. Here, even the slightest misjudgement — a step too wide, a lean too early — and the whole play folded like wet cardboard.
On the first rep, they had me lining up on the offense as linebacker and I lunged too soon. I misread the fake with my shoulder down and my eyes up, already half a heartbeat too slow. The runner slipped through the inside gap like a shadow. The whistle blew, sharp and final.
And from behind me, quiet but carrying, came a mutter, “And that’s on being Coach’s nephew.”
Fair enough. Let them think whatever they want.
I reset and forced the noise out of my head. Forced my breathing to become steady.
The pads itched, sweat prickled between my shoulder blades, and the turf radiated heat straight through my cleats. It felt like every eye was on me, like a spotlight.
I was the new guy. The coach's nephew. The outsider.
Reece’s voice came from my right, “Hey, bro.” He had a kind of cockiness only Americans seemed to be able to pull off, but there was an edge to his grin suggesting he was testing me, not teasing. “You chasing ghosts, or was that supposed to be a tackle drill?”
“Just warming up.” I matched his grin. “Didn’t want to embarrass you lot too early.”
A ripple of laughter followed — half friendly, half skeptical. Still, better than silence.
Reece let out a bark of a laugh, helmet tipping forward. “Yeah? Warm up faster, then. My nana could’ve filled that gap.”
“Send her over next rep,” I shot back. “Could use the competition.”
There was more laughter, but mercifully it was less sharp this time. Coach’s whistle cut through it and we reset.
This time, I waited and focused on the quarterback’s hips like the assistant coach had told us to.
Don’t watch the ball — watch the hips. Hips don’t lie. Apparently, Shakira and defensive coordinators agreed on one thing.
The fake came subtly, but I didn’t take the bait. The runner hesitated, hunting for a lane. I stepped in, low and tight. Shoulder first, I drove forward. It was a clean hit, sending a satisfying shock through the pads.
The field responded with shouts and pounding footsteps, the impact of which echoed across the turf. It was chaos, but an organized kind of chaos I was familiar with from the rugby pitch, and something in my chest loosened at the sound of it.
“Okay, Australia!” someone yelled. “Guess he does know how to hit!”
Reece laughed. “Don’t gas him up yet. He’s still figuring out which side of the field he’s on.”
“Right side’s whichever one I’m flattening you on.” I grinned through my facemask.
A few more chuckles and the air noticeably lightened, making my shoulders unclench. It wasn’t much, but it was a start. The first tiny shift towards thinking, ‘Maybe he’s not quite as useless.’
Next came coverage drills. These focused on reading plays and reacting to routes. The language was foreign — slants, flats, curls, zones — and I kept losing track of what I was supposed to cover.
Still, my instincts helped. I could read body language, sense momentum. No matter what shape the ball was, space opened and closed in the same way. I just had to teach my brain a new accent.
By the time Coach blew for water, I’d stopped trying to fight it and started letting my body learn the rhythm. My footwork tightened and my reaction time became more consistent. I wasn’t good yet — but I wasn’t drowning either.
“Not bad, Whitaker.” Reece jogged beside me as we headed for the sideline. “Guess you’re more than a tourist after all.”
“Guess so.” I tugged my helmet off and ran a hand through my hair. “Didn’t fly halfway across the world just to make your highlight reel.”
He barked a laugh. “Relax, man. We give everyone shit. You’ll fit in fine. Just, you know, don’t make us look bad in front of your uncle.”
The second half of practice flipped the script. Coach wanted me to try a few reps at tight end — ‘two-way prospect,’ they called it, like I was a problem they hadn’t solved yet. I suspected it meant too raw to bench, too strong to waste.
The tight ends’ coach looked like a man whose blood type was caffeine. Clipboard glued to his hand, veins visible in his temples. He barked out instructions faster than my brain could translate.
Motion, stance, hand placement, timing. It was less a sport and more a kind of choreography.
The guy beside me, Kendrick, nudged my shoulder. “Don’t overthink it, man. Just hit your route, turn, and catch. Easy.”
“Yeah, easy for you,” I mumbled.
He smirked. “Everything’s easy ‘til you take a safety to the ribs.”
“Comforting.”
The whistle blew and I lined up. With my hands braced on my thighs, I tried to remember what they had told me about stance, motion and break.
The quarterback’s cadence cut through the air — “Blue eighty! Set — hut!” — and I pushed off. I was too upright at first, but the acceleration came back to me in a rush. I broke right, but too late on the turn, and the ball whizzed past my fingertips.
“Good route, bad hands!” the coach barked. “Again!”
Fair enough.
We reset, and I focused on my rhythm: one, two, plant, turn. My boots dug into the turf. The ball came at me again, fast and heavy. This time, I caught it; my hands stung from the impact, but I pulled it tight against my chest before the defender could close in.
“Better!” Coach called. “Maybe Whitaker can learn!”
Kendrick jogged past, slapping my shoulder pad so hard it jolted me. “Told you. Just running and catching, man. What’d you play again back home?”
“Rugby.” I rolled my shoulder where he’d hit me. “Less choreography, more chaos.”
He grinned. “You’ll fit right in. We've got plenty of chaos here. We just schedule it.”
The next rep, I was lined up against a defensive back. He was short and fast, with a look that said I was already his least favorite person.
“Don’t think your uncle’s giving you my reps, bro,” he sneered, crouching down.
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
“Good. Stay outta my lane.”
The snap came, and we collided with a crash of pads I wasn’t used to. His forearm jammed into my chest, causing me to lose my balance and act on instinct.
Rugby taught you to use the hit, not fight it. I rolled my shoulder, let his weight carry us forward, stepped through, and broke free.
By some kind of miracle, the ball spiraled, and I caught it clean. I turned and took off through the end of the rep like a bat out of hell.
“Not bad, Australia!” someone yelled again.
The defensive back jogged past, shaking his head. “Okay, maybe not lucky this time.”
“Cheers,” I panted.
By the end of the day, my shirt was soaked, my calves were trembling, and my lungs were burning, but my body buzzed with the right kind of exhaustion. The kind indicating you had survived the battle and might even have earned your spot doing it.
As we walked off, Kendrick fell into step beside me again. “We’re hitting Moe’s after this. Burritos the size of your head. You in?”
I hesitated, glancing at my uncle who was talking to the other coaches. “Yeah, alright. Don’t want to look like the antisocial foreigner.”
“Good man. Word of advice? Avoid the ranch dressing. Americans are crazy about the stuff.”
“Right.” I laughed. “Duly noted.”
By the time we hit the locker room, my arms ached. Helmets clanged, laughter echoed off the tiles and the air hummed with post-practice energy, almost resembling a sense of belonging.
I was halfway through untying my cleats when someone addressed me again. “Gotta be nice having the coach for an uncle.”
I laughed, trying to make it sound easy. “Yeah, real nice. Means I get yelled at twice as much — once here, once at home.”
Kendrick smirked. “Still, bet it helps.”
“Yeah, nah.” I tugged off my shirt. “He’s not really the favoritism type. More the ‘run it again until you get it right’ type. He reckons I’m here to help him prove a point.”
“Crash-test dummy?” Reece offered.
“Exactly. Family discount.”
The room burst into laughter again, easily and naturally. Someone threw a towel, and someone else argued about who’d eaten the last protein bar.
Then Kendrick leaned over again, his tone quieter. “You sticking around after the season?”
“Nah. Uncle roped me in to help with his ‘system.’ Just here for the year. Then it’s back home. Rugby. Real coffee. Summer at the right time of the year.”
He nodded, slow, like he got it. “Guess that’s why you’re killing yourself out there.”
“Something like that.”
The conversation drifted away. For a second, I just sat there, listening to the rhythm of the locker room — the laughter, the cussing, the slamming of lockers. For the first time in weeks, it didn’t feel like I was completely out of my depth.
Even if they still called me Coach’s nephew.