Chapter 22: Chapter 22: Trial Day
Jamie stepped out of the car and the first thing he noticed was the noise.
Not loud noise. Organised noise. Boot bags being unzipped. A coach calling a name off a clipboard. The flat bounce of a ball somewhere behind the fence, being kicked by someone who had arrived even earlier than they had.
The showcase at Croydon had felt like a school sports day with scouts attached. This place did not feel like that. The pitches ran back from the road in fenced rows, the reception building had glass doors that opened on their own, and the staff at the entrance were checking names against lists, one by one, before anyone got past them.
His dad came around the car. Garcia had the folder. Rafi stood by the open boot, scanning the other players crossing the car park the way he scanned everything, like he was pricing it.
Some of the boys were bigger than Jamie. One had an academy jacket from a club Jamie recognised, the bag to match it, and the walk of someone who had been to ten of these. Two others were calling to each other across the tarmac, loud, easy, like the place belonged to them already.
"Have you got everything?" his dad asked.
"Yeah," Jamie said.
His hand had tightened on the bag strap without him telling it to.
Registration was a desk inside the glass doors with two staff members and a queue of players and parents.
When their turn came, Garcia stepped forward and did all of it. Name, programme slot, guardian consent form, medical declaration, emergency contact, position, previous academy background. He had every document out before the woman behind the desk asked for it, in the order she asked for it.
She checked the last page, nodded, and handed across a lanyard with a card on it.
"Jamie Holt. Programme number forty-seven. Schedule’s on the back, accommodation block C. Players head through the side door once you’ve said your goodbyes."
Jamie took the lanyard. His dad was watching the desk, and Jamie watched him notice that nothing was missing, that nothing had to be chased, that the woman had not frowned at a single page. His dad glanced at Garcia, just briefly.
Garcia did not say anything about it. He just put the folder away.
The woman behind the desk was already explaining the rules to the next family, the same speech she must have given fifty times that morning. Players stay with the camp group. Parents, agents, and private coaches do not enter player areas. Viewing from the designated areas during approved sessions. No contact during training. Meals are players and staff only.
Jamie heard all of it land on him at once.
His dad would be nearby all week. Behind a barrier. Garcia and Rafi could text and watch from wherever they were allowed to stand. But the moment Jamie walked through that side door, he was on his own in there.
They had a minute near the door, the four of them, while players filed past.
"Call when you’re settled," his dad said. That was all. Jamie knew what it had cost him to keep it that short, and he was grateful for it, because two boys from the queue were within earshot and anything more would have followed him into the camp.
"Paperwork’s done," Garcia said. "Everything off the pitch is handled. Your only job this week is football." He paused, and for a second Jamie thought there would be more — a speech, a line about the two weeks, something heavy. There wasn’t. Garcia just nodded at him, once, like they were two people who had agreed on something.
Jamie nodded back.
Rafi looked at him for a moment.
"Listen to the coaches. Eat properly. Sleep early." He picked up Jamie’s boot bag from the floor and pushed it into his chest. "And don’t make me regret waking up at six for this."
"I won’t."
"We’ll see."
A staff member by the side door called for programme numbers forty through fifty. Jamie wanted to say something else, something that matched what the two weeks had been, but the moment was already moving and the words were not there.
He turned and walked.
At the door he glanced back once. The three of them were standing where he had left them, on the other side of the barrier rope — his dad with his hands in his pockets, Garcia calm, Rafi with his arms folded.
From this side, they looked like people behind a fence.
Jamie went through the door.
Block C was a corridor of twin rooms above the changing block, and the players moved along it in a slow, noisy clump, reading door numbers off their lanyards.
The talking had already started. Some of them knew each other — from academies, from county football, from other trials like this one. Names were being thrown across the corridor. Someone was laughing too loudly at something that was not that funny.
"You’re forty-seven?"
Jamie turned. The boy next to him was about his height, with a South London accent and a sports bag worn front-ways like a delivery rider. He was pointing at Jamie’s lanyard, then at his own. Forty-eight.
"Miles," the boy said. "We’re in the same room, look." He tipped his card so Jamie could see the room number. "Where’d you play?"
"Millwall," Jamie said. Then, because it was coming out anyway: "Released."
"Mate, half this corridor got released from somewhere," Miles said, without missing a beat. "The other half’s lying about it."
Jamie almost laughed. It came out as breath through his nose, but it was close.
The room was small and clean. Two beds, two narrow wardrobes, a window looking down at the pitches. Miles threw his bag onto the bed nearest the door without checking it and started unpacking like he had done this six times before, which, it turned out from his talking, he roughly had.
Jamie put his boots against the wall by his bed, side by side, and checked his phone.
His dad had texted already. Settled in ok?
Garcia’s message was short. Follow the programme. Keep it simple. Speak tomorrow.
Rafi’s was one line.
Body open. First touch out. Forward if it’s there.
Jamie read it twice.
"That your dad?" Miles asked, from inside his wardrobe.
"My coach."
"He sounds miserable."
"He is," Jamie said. "He’s good, though."
Miles laughed, and the room felt a few degrees warmer than it had.
Dinner was in a hall on the ground floor, long tables, food served from a counter at the end, staff eating at their own table by the wall.
Jamie saw the shape of the camp in the first five minutes.
There was a loud table near the windows where the confident ones had collected — boys talking over each other about academies they had left, name-dropping coaches, comparing who had trialled where. A boy called Dylan was holding most of that table’s attention, telling a story that kept getting bigger.
There were quieter tables too. Boys eating with their eyes on their plates. Boys checking phones under the table. Boys listening to conversations they had not been invited into.
Jamie ended up with Miles, a calm midfielder called Tomi who spoke little but never seemed uncomfortable, and a technical-looking kid called Bilal who had opinions about every academy in London and shared most of them before the main course was done.
