strap, checking each one in with the laptop as she went.
‘So what exactly is this system?’ Jared asked when the players had filed onto the field to warm up. ‘Some kind of glorified pedometer, like those expensive wristband gadgets that tell people they woke up three times during the night, but don’t actually tell them why they woke up or what they can do about it?’
He sounded downright hostile. What was his problem? she thought again. But she gritted her teeth and tried her best to be polite. ‘It does measure the number of steps the players take, yes,’ she said, ‘but it also monitors their average speed, the average steps they take per game, their heart rate average and maximum, and their VO2.’ VO2 measured the amount of oxygen used by the body to convert the energy from food into adenosine triphosphate; the higher the VO2 max, the higher the athlete’s level of fitness.
He scoffed. ‘How on earth can you measure VO2 properly without hooking someone up to a system with a mask?’
‘It’s an estimate,’ she admitted, ‘but this system is a lot more than just a “glorified pedometer”.’ She put exaggerated quotes round the phrase with her fingers, just to make the point that she wasn’t impressed by his assessment. Sure, once he knew what the system did and how it worked, she’d be happy to listen to him and to any suggestions he might have for improving it. But right now he was speaking from a position of being totally uninformed, so how could his opinion be in the least bit valid?
‘The point is,’ she said, ‘to look at reducing the number of soft-tissue injuries. That means the players get more time to train and play, and they spend less time recovering from injuries. This particular system has been tested with a rugby team and it reduced their soft-tissue injury rate by seventy per cent, and my boss thinks it’s worth giving it a try on other sports.’ She gave him a grim smile. ‘Just so you know, I’m not trying to put you out of a job. If anything, I’m trying to make your life easier by taking out the small, time-consuming stuff.’
‘And you’re actually a qualified doctor?’ he asked, sounding sceptical.
Give me strength, Bailey thought, but she gave him another polite smile. ‘Remind me to bring my degree certificate in with me next time,’ she said. ‘Or you can look me up on the Internet, if you’re that fussed. I run sports medicine clinics three days a week at the London Victoria, so you’ll find me listed in the department there, and I spend the other two working days each week on a research project.’
‘So you’re using this system of yours with other teams as well?’ he asked.
‘No—this is the only team I’m working with, and I only do one research project at a time. My last one was preventative medicine,’ she explained. ‘Basically I worked with patients who had high blood pressure. The aim was to help them to lose weight and maintain lean muscle mass, and that reduced both their blood pressure and their risk of cardiovascular incidents.’ She couldn’t resist adding, ‘And by that I mean heart attacks and strokes.’
‘Right.’ Jared stared at Bailey. Archie had called her a ‘bonny lass’, but she was so much more than that. She was truly beautiful, with a heart-shaped face and huge brown eyes—emphasised by her elfin crop. She looked more like some glamorous Mediterranean princess than a doctor.
But, in Jared’s experience, beautiful women spelled trouble and heartache. His ex, Sasha, had used her stunning looks to get her own way—and Jared had fallen for it hard enough to get very badly burned. Nowadays he was pretty much impervious to huge eyes and winsome smiles. But he’d already seen how Archie was following Bailey round like a lapdog; he had a nasty feeling that Bailey Randall had used her looks to get her own way with her ridiculous bit of computerised kit, the way Sasha always used her looks.
Still, at least this system of hers wasn’t something that would actually hurt the players. It wouldn’t be of much real use—like the pricey fitness wristbands he’d referred to earlier, it wouldn’t give enough information about what was actually wrong or how to fix it—but it wouldn’t do any real harm, either.
Jared spent the session on the side of the pitch, ready in case any of the players had an injury that needed treating. But there were no strains, sprains or anything more serious; and, at the other end of the scale, there wasn’t even a bruise or a contusion.
Half a lifetime ago, he’d been one of them, he thought wryly. A young hopeful, planning a career in the sport and dreaming of playing for his country. He’d actually made it and played for the England under-nineteen squad, scoring several goals in international matches. But Bailey Randall’s bit of kit wouldn’t have done anything to save him from the knee injury in his final game—the tackle that had stopped his football career in its tracks. Jared had ended up pursuing his original plans instead, studying for his A-levels and following in the family tradition by taking a degree in medicine.
The lure of football had drawn Jared to work with a club as their team doctor, rather than working in a hospital or his parents’ general practice. And he still enjoyed the highs and lows of the game, the camaraderie among the players and hearing the supporters roar their approval when a goal was scored.
At the end of the training session, Archie turned to Bailey. ‘Over to you.’
Jared watched in sheer disbelief as Bailey proceeded to take the youth team through a series of yoga stretches and then breathing exercises.
What place did yoga have on a football pitch? In his experience, the players would do far better working on sport-specific training. As well as ball control, they needed to focus on muscular endurance and lower-body strength, and also work on explosive acceleration and short bursts of speed. If Archie wanted him to do it, Jared could design a training programme easily enough—either a warm-up routine that would work for the whole team, or some player-specific programmes to help deal with each player’s weak spots—and it would do a lot more for the players’ overall neuromuscular co-ordination than yoga would.
But having a go at Bailey Randall in front of the team wouldn’t be professional, so Jared kept his mouth shut until the lads had gone for a shower and she was doing things on her laptop. Then he walked over to her and said, ‘Can we have a quick word?’
She looked up from her laptop with an expression of surprise, but nodded. ‘Sure.’
‘What exactly does your box of tricks tell us?’ he asked.
‘It analyses each player’s performance. For each player, I can show you a graph of his average performance over the last ten matches or training sessions, and how today’s performance compares against that average.’
So far, so good. ‘Which tells us what?’
‘The system will pick up if a player is underperforming,’ she said. ‘Maybe he’s coming down with a cold but isn’t showing any symptoms yet—and if he’s sick he’s more at risk of sustaining injury and shouldn’t be playing.’
He gave her a sceptical look. ‘So you’re telling me you can predict if a player’s going to get a cough or a cold?’
‘No, but I can predict the likelihood of the player sustaining an injury in his next match, based on his performance today and measured against an average of his last ten sessions.’
‘Right.’ Jared still wasn’t totally convinced. And then he tackled the subject that bothered him most about today’s antics. ‘And the yoga?’
‘As a football team doctor—someone who’s clearly specialised in
