Chapter 62: Chapter 62: The First Half in the Shirt I
(Jamie POV)
The shirt was already sticking to Jamie’s back before the match had even started.
Warm-up. Wet grass under his studs, spare balls scattered by the halfway line, parents packed two deep behind the low barrier, coaches pacing the touchline in club coats.
There was no stand worth the name here, no roar. It was an away academy ground, plain and cold and serious, the kind of place where under-18 football got played properly and nobody pretended it was a stadium.
Across the pitch, the home side warmed up.
They moved like a team that knew its patterns. Short, sharp passing drills, everyone arriving on time, the ball never bouncing loose. Second in the table, and they looked it.
Jamie ran his short sprints and tried to breathe slow.
He caught them near the barrier without meaning to. Alan, hands in his jacket. Garcia beside him, still, a folder under one arm.
He looked away fast.
He did not let his eyes sit on them for comfort. His shoulders pulled tight instead, and his grip adjusted on the hem of his shirt, and he put his gaze back where it needed to be.
On their left winger.
Small, quick, already bouncing on his toes. That was the man who would come down Jamie’s side today, and Jamie wanted one thing more than anything.
He wanted to look like he belonged in the shirt.
TWEET.
The match kicked off, and it did not come to Jamie at all.
Tranmere tried to build from the back, the centre-backs splitting, the keeper rolling it out. But the home striker did not just close down. He pressed clever, curving his run to cut the pass inside, herding the ball wide.
Their number eight read it and stepped across the lane into midfield, killing the pass before it could come.
Tranmere went sideways once. Then sideways again. Then the centre-back gave up on it and hit it long.
THWACK.
The clearance sailed, got headed back, and the home side had it inside ten seconds.
At right-back, Jamie stayed on his feet and read the shape. He checked Finn ahead of him on the right, then the centre-back inside him, then the gap of open grass behind his own shoulder.
He did not shout about it. He moved into it, half a step at a time, so the picture was right before he needed it.
This was not the trial. He could feel that already, in the speed of the first ninety seconds.
The home side showed why they were second, and they did it on the other side.
They swung the ball left to right and back again, patient, dragging Tranmere’s midfield narrow with every switch until a gap opened out wide on Tranmere’s left.
Jamie watched it happen from across the pitch, helpless to reach it.
Their right winger pinned Tranmere’s left-back to the line. The pass went outside. The left-back was stuck, and Tranmere’s centre-back had to step out to cover, which opened the space behind him.
The cutback came low and hard across the box.
THUD.
Tranmere’s keeper came off his line and smothered it at the near post, spilling and grabbing it at the second attempt while bodies piled in.
Jamie’s chest was already tight, and the ball had not touched him once.
It told him the thing he needed to know early. The whole team was under it today, not just him.
He got his first touch a minute later, and he made it a good one.
Tranmere won it back and switched under pressure, the ball skidding out to Jamie by the right touchline with a man already closing.
He did not panic and hammer it. He took his first touch forward, out of the pressure, and slid it into Finn’s feet ahead of him.
Then he went.
He overlapped straight away, hard down the outside, dragging the home left-back with him whether the ball came back or not.
It did not come back. Finn turned inside instead and recycled it.
But the run had done its job. It stretched them, and it gave Tranmere the first bit of space anyone had found on that flank all game.
Jamie jogged back into position, lungs working, and felt the difference in his own body.
At the trial, he had a moment to think. Here the window to decide was smaller, and a beat late meant the pass was gone.
He had made this one in time. That mattered more to him than it should have.
Then their left winger came for him properly.
It was not a two-man ambush. It was just good football. Their centre-mid found the full-back, the full-back fed the winger, and the winger took it facing Jamie with room to build up speed.
He shaped to drive down the outside.
Jamie did not dive in. He held his body at an angle, showed the winger the line, and stayed patient, keeping his weight ready to turn.
The winger checked, looked for the inside, and found it shut. Jamie had closed the lane with his stance before the man could even lean into it.
The winger rolled it back to his full-back instead, and Jamie breathed out.
No tackle. No slide. Just standing in the right place with the right shape until the danger folded on its own.
Somewhere behind the barrier, Garcia had not moved.
The match drifted away from Jamie again, and it did not go well for Tranmere.
Their midfield could not hold the ball. Every time they won it, the home number eight was on them before they could turn, and the passes into the striker kept arriving late and behind him.
Jamie saw the striker throw one arm out, furious, after another ball died at his feet with two men on his back.
He heard Mercer on the touchline, sharp. "Show earlier. He’s on an island up there."
Ahead of him, Finn turned and slapped his own thigh, asking for the ball quicker, quicker.
Tranmere were not being outclassed. They were being made to rush, and a good team could win a half just by doing that.
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