Dropping the Ball
Niall
ADRENALINE IS MY best mate.
Just don’t let JJ hear me saying that.
Adrenaline does a lot for me—far more than alcohol ever has.
It’s a clean, sharp high that drowns out the hammering hangover in my skull and, more importantly, dulls the agonizing, persistent throb in my right knee down to a manageable hum.
Without it, I don’t think I would have ever made it back onto the pitch.
Without it, I wouldn't still be the captain. I’d just be the broken lad sitting in the stands with a bad leg and a worse attitude.
I’m everywhere on the field today. I have to be.
I’ve fielded high balls, twisting in the damp October air to intercept, landing heavy on my studs—ignoring the jolt that the movement shot up my leg—and driving the ball forward.
I’ve been laying off quick, precision passes to Fitzy, to JJ, to Molly.
One of them was always right there in my line of sight, anticipating the play.
Molly’s playing out of her skin, too. She’s smaller than nearly everyone else on the pitch, lacking the brute bulk of the St. Jude’s lads (another farm fed lot like Ballymore). But she’s fast, and she’s fearless, which gives her enough of an edge to shine like a star.
I hang back for a split second, chest heaving, just watching her weave through heavy traffic.
She dodges a brutal, sliding tackle from a guy twice her size with a deft little flick of her boot, spinning around him and sending the ball rocketing toward the top corner of the net.
The St. Jude’s keeper barely gets his fingertips on it, tipping it over the crossbar for a corner.
I could genuinely stand here on the field watching her for ages, completely entranced by the way she moves.
She keeps the ball controlled between her feet like it’s a physical extension of her own body.
Her caramel coloured hair is pulled back into one of her ponytails, which whips around her shoulders when she pivots, and her eyes always stay entirely focused on the game in front of her.
It’s not exactly productive—captain or not—to be caught staring at another player in the middle of a high-stakes match, so I give my head a hard shake, snap myself out of it, and jog up for the corner kick.
By the time the referee blows the whistle for halftime, we’re up 2-1. It’s a lead, but it feels too tight for my liking. Still, I tell myself, there’s time for us to score again and pull further ahead.
Last year, we had an outstanding, practically unstoppable season.
But a lot of our best players had been the sixth years who had since graduated out.
We’ve got a brilliant new asset in Molly, but we’re all still trying to figure out our rhythm, still trying to learn how to breathe together as a single organism on the pitch with the new recruits this year.
I really am trying not to think negatively. I mean—we’ve won our first two games of the season, haven't we? Who’s to say we won’t win this one?
Inside the locker room, the lads are sprawled out on the wooden benches, all looking absolutely bolloxed. JJ is standing over the sink, pouring freezing tap water directly over his reddened face, while Finn lays entirely flat on his back on the floor, groaning at the ceiling.
“Christ alive,” Finn mutters, his chest heaving under his mud-stained jersey, as he takes a pump from his inhaler like it was a cigar. “I think I left my left lung out there on the twenty-yard line.”
“Good,” Fitzy shoots back, tossing over a balled-up, damp towel that hits Finn square in the face. “Maybe it’ll grow back and you’ll learn to stop whinging.”
“That’ll be the day, lad. The second half is gonna be a bloodbath. They’re raging out there.”
I lean my back against the cold metal of my locker, rolling my shoulders to release the tension knotting in my neck. The adrenaline of the first forty-five minutes is already starting to evaporate in the warm room, leaving the raw, biting pain exposed.
I press the heel of my hand hard against the joint, right over the jagged little surgical scar.
The months following that surgery on my knee had been the worst three months of my life—the crutches, the agonizing physio, the fear that I would never play properly again.
I had just been cleared to play in late August, but the doctors had warned me it would take time to feel ‘normal.’
What they didn’t tell me was that it might never feel normal again.
I don’t know if the grinding agony I feel every time I pivot was just phantom pain—my brain misfiring trauma signals—or if I was actively, knowingly shredding the cartilage all over again.
And I refuse to find out. I won’t be telling Mam, I won’t be telling Coach, and I definitely won’t be telling the lads.
If I told anyone, I’d end up benched. And if I get benched, I’m nothing.
If I could survive the end of last season on a torn knee before the surgery, I can survive this season.
“Right, lads—and Molly, Molly get in here—listen up now,” Coach O’Shea speaks as he comes into the locker room, clapping his hands together.
Molly slips into the room, hovering near the doorway.
Her cheeks are flushed a vibrant pink from the cold and the exertion (or maybe from being in the boys’ locker room), and stray pieces of hair are plastered to her damp forehead.
She catches my eye across the room, her chest rising and falling quickly.
“We’re up, but only by one,” O’Shea continues, his voice rough from shouting out on the pitch.
“St. Jude’s are playing like thugs because they know we’re technically better.
Their defense is weak on the left flank.
Six, Blue, I want the two of you exploiting that gap every chance you get.
Punish them for it. Fourteen—you’re doing grand work out there, brilliant footwork, but I need you tighter on the wing.
Don’t let them push you into the center.
And for fuck’s sake, someone needs to mark their number nine before he decides to put one in the back of our net. ”
JJ groans, dragging a hand down his wet face. “That lad is built like a brick shithouse, Coach. He’s got shoulders on him like a front-row rugby forward. How’s anyone supposed to stop him?”
“With your face, preferably,” Finn pipes up from the floor, grinning weakly when JJ turns to flip him off.
“My face is significantly better looking than whatever tragedy is currently happening with your hair, Sergeant Dipshit,” JJ shoots back, insulting Finn’s buzzcut for probably the hundredth time since he buzzed it in August after a bad haircut.
“Enough,” I cut in, pushing off the locker and stepping into the center of the room.
I have to project authority, even if my leg felt like it was going to shatter like glass.
I’m still the captain. “We stick to the plan. Keep possession, tire them out. They’re heavy on their feet, so we hit them fast on the counter-attack. ”
The lads start their usual chant, and my eyes find Molly’s again in the sea of voices.
Her eyes were such a soft, powder-blue that are luminous in a way that makes every other color in the room fade from my memory.
Like petals in the sunlight, or a sky just after dawn.
So pale and serene, yet impossible to ignore, as if she can read my every thought.
I never thought I liked the color blue before.
??ˋ ?? ?ˊ?
“I'M FINE,” I insist for the hundredth time, my voice tight and strained as I lean heavily against the perspex siding of the dugout.
I messed up—of course I’d messed up. I had stretched out my right leg in a desperate bid to block the ball, and I was blinded by white hot pain shooting up my leg from the right side and ended up on the ground without being able to catch myself.
I don’t look at the pitch. I can’t bear to. Play has resumed, but without a defensive anchor we were getting torn to shreds out there. St. Jude’s already brought our score up to a tie, and I have a bad feeling about the rest of the game. “Just tape it up tight and let me get back in.”
Coach is crouched in front of me, his face grim and unreadable as his thick fingers probe the tape around my knee. “You can barely put weight on the bloody thing, lad.”
“I’m fine. I’m telling you, I just tripped awkwardly. Caught my studs in the turf. It’s a twist, nothing more.” I lie through my teeth, since I really don’t know what happened out there. I’m staring over his head, actively ignoring the way my knee’s currently pulsing like a second heartbeat.
I had violently refused to be looked at by the actual team medic, batting his hands away when he ran onto the pitch, which is why Coach is the one currently inspecting the joint on the sidelines.
It’s a dark, twisted sort of miracle; somehow, despite feeling like someone had driven a red-hot iron spike through my leg, the knee didn’t look heavily inflamed on the outside.
There’s not a speck of swelling. All you can see is the pale, jagged scar from my surgery cutting across the skin. Nothing else.
It was strange, really. I’m not sure how it works. It hurts, all the time, but it never shows it on the surface and is never caught by the tests the doctors do at my check-ups. It’s like it’s just invisible to anyone but me.
Maybe my body is as good at acting as I am.
“I’ll throw another roll of tape on it. I’m good to go. Let me finish the match, Coach. There’s only minutes left.”
Coach hesitates, his jaw working as he glances over his shoulder at the chaotic state of the pitch, and then lets out a tired sigh.
He looks back at me, his eyes softening with a pity that makes my stomach churn.
“Niall... I know how much what happened last season broke your heart. But you can’t do this to yourself again. ”
“I’m fine,” I repeat, my voice cracking slightly. I have to be fine. Because letting the lads down isn’t an option. Because the last time I wasn’t fine, the last time I was broken and useless, my world had collapsed around me. I can’t be the boy on the crutches again. I wouldn’t survive it.
“No,” Coach shook his head sternly. “You’re sitting, got it? You’re done for the match, lad. Sit down.”
“Coach—”
“I said ‘sit!’ You got lucky last time, you aren’t taking any chances again. Not again. Now you hush and let the respondent come look at ya.”
I rub a hand down my face. I need a drink.