we were going to do it. We had Pete Beardsley and Les Ferdinand up top and Daz Peacock and Warren Barton at the back – and if you think you can name any other defensive pairing with more luxuriant hair than those two then frankly you’re lying. And yet it wasn’t enough. My one tiny consolation at that time was that I was convinced I’d never be able to feel any worse. I had hit rock bottom and Sir Al Ferguson was riding high. But the more things change the more they stay the same. Now it’s not Sir Al Ferguson that I’m up against.
It’s the bloody L’zuhl.
Adapting to life on a new planet is a lot like taking the reins at a new club – you don’t know your way around, you can’t remember anybody’s name and you worry constantly about being vaporised by an aggressive alien race. Well, maybe not that last one.
Life on Palangonia hasn’t been easy, even a year down the line. When the L’zuhl invaded Earth and laid waste to everything mankind had built over however many thousands of years, I was already gone. Say what you like about politicians, but they had a plan and you have to give credit where it’s due. The Alliance Assembly (the big conference of galactic bigwigs) had been fighting the L’zuhl war for generations while we on Earth were blissfully unaware – until the L’zuhl fleet was pretty much on our doorstep. The Assembly helped us to evacuate as much of Earth’s population as possible to various distant planets with the intention that we could regroup and then join them in the fight against the L’zuhl – we weren’t the first or the last planet to get that kind of treatment. Others sadly fell to the L’zuhl before the Alliance could step in. We were the lucky ones, I guess. Depending on your point of view.
The human Compound here on Palangonia is in many ways like a massive great prison – thick stone walls, machine-gun turrets, a heavy law-enforcement presence. But at the same time it has a library, a cinema and three Costa Coffee shops, so I shouldn’t knock it too much. Over six thousand people are housed within the walls and, aside from their occasional attacks on the Compound gates with their spears and their bows and arrows, as well as their repeated claims that we’ve annexed their sacred land and defiled their heritage, the native Palangonian tribespeople have welcomed us with open arms.
But of course, the best thing about the Compound is also the very reason I’m here. My football club: Palangonia FC – the beating heart of the community. Sure, it’s a small operation at the moment, but listen, you’ve got to start somewhere. And yes, okay, there are some people who believe that funding a football team during a time of galactic war is an appalling frivolity – I won’t name names, that’s not my style, but General Leigh is one of them. The way I look at it is this: if not for the beautiful game – the unparalleled glory of a last-minute winner, the jaw-dropping splendour of an overhead kick, the agonising outstretched arm of the goalie keeping a well-struck penalty at bay – then what the bloody hell are we even fighting for? How can the displaced people of Earth (the ones who drew the short straw and ended up out here at the rotten arse-end of space, anyway) possibly hope to keep that stiff upper lip in place without the prospect of going to the match on a Saturday afternoon and watching my boys take on a side from a neighbouring nebula? That’s why Palangonia FC is here. That’s why Kevin Keegan is here. That’s why it matters.
It’s really all we have left.
PALANGONIA FC
I closed the door to the dressing room, the distant hum of the crowd extinguished with the click of the latch. I stared straight down, puffed out my cheeks and shook my head in dismay.
‘Just not good enough, is it?’ I said to my shoes. ‘Not good enough at all. You’ve bottled that. You’ve disappointed me today, boys.’
There were a few awkward coughs and the clacking of boot studs on the floor. I sized up my players in turn, each of them looking anywhere but in my direction (except for Little Dunc, my left-back, though he’s severely cross-eyed so it’s hard to tell either way). My midfield general, Wiggins, looked terribly out of shape and was blowing out of his arse, to be quite frank. I made a mental note to forbid him from going back for seconds during the next pre-match roast dinner. Gribble, central defender of giraffe-like proportions, was staring sullenly at his boots. My holding midfielder, Aidy Pain, a thorn in my side who stubbornly refused to ever do a damn thing I told him, had let us down badly after I shouted to him to keep the energy up midway through the second half – he had promptly sat down in the centre circle for a rest. It had been a shameful showing – from all of them. They weren’t fit to wear the shirt (Wiggins, quite literally).
‘We should have had the beating of that shower today,’ I huffed. ‘This Piscean side are punching well above their weight in this division and yet you let them walk over you and take away all three points. It’s disgraceful, actually.’
‘Ah, now, Kev, let’s be fair,’ said a voice beside me. ‘The ref gave them the rub of the green.’
I turned to look at my assistant, eyebrows raised in surprise at his interjection. For me, Gerry Francis is one in a million. No, let me dial that back a bit – one in a hundred, let’s say. A solid pair of hands. The funny thing is, although we got along fine and occasionally saw one another socially, Gerry and I never worked together at all back on Earth in the years before the L’zuhl invasion. He just so happened to be on the same evacuation shuttle as me when Earth went all to buggery and it’s always nice to see a familiar face. It’s actually quite a heart-warming story, if you look past the genocidal context.
‘Don’t forget that handball they got away with at 0–0,’ Gerry went on. ‘The fourth official told me the ref couldn’t give it on account of the Pisceans having flippers rather than hands. That old chestnut.’
There were a few murmurs of assent from the squad.
‘Okay, fine,’ I conceded the point. ‘But what about you, Gilly? You were clean through on goal in that second half and you produced the most timid shot I’ve ever seen in my life. The keeper didn’t even bother to catch it, he just leathered the shot right up the other end of the pitch!’
‘But, gaffer,’ Andy Gill said nervously, ‘I play right-back. That wasn’t a shot, it was a passback to our own keeper in our own box and then he cleared it upfield.’
‘Aye, well,’ I muttered, feeling some of the wind retreating from my sails. Gilly was a top-class player, no question, but the trouble was he knew it. I’d signed him on a tip-off from Glenn Hoddle, who’d seen him play for the team from the human colony on Flaxxu, a desert planet a couple of star systems over. Glenn had spent most of that day telling me about ‘Christian Values’ but when I couldn’t find any player on the Cross-Galaxy Database with that name, Andy Gill proved a decent second choice. And yet, here he was undermining my authority with, to be fair, a well-argued rebuttal.
‘The point is,’ I went on, determined not to let them off the hook, ‘we’re disappointing our fans week after week. There were almost thirty-seven people out there tonight and every one of them is going home disappointed.’ I sighed despondently and ran a hand through my hair. ‘Go on, get ready for your warm-down. I’ve said my bit. Think on.’
Wordlessly, my players began to peel off their kit, the smell of sweat, grass and that sticky translucent substance that coats the scales of the Piscean players leaving a sharp tang in the air. As the boys began to file out to the showers, I caught sight of Rodway, my star striker. He was yawning like it was going out of fashion, and in that moment my patience with him reached an end.
‘Everything
