Roders!” enthuses Rumna. “Keep at it! We’ve got them rattled!”
Rumna and Napum are fantastic and the only thing that keeps us in the game. In the first few moments Rumna intercepts a cross ball and streaks half the length of the field to side-step the goalie and sweep the ball into the net. At the other end Napum twice picks the ball out of the air while I am looking for it in the back of the net. Despite this and the increasingly determined efforts of the rest of the team we are still only drawing one all at half time. This is not bad but in the second half we have to play uphill and against a gale of almost hurricane proportions. The only thing in our favour is that the goal area we are now defending has collected a lot of water and is going to become increasingly difficult to play in.
“Fantastic effort, girls!” enthuses Penny who appears at half time. “I feel quite overcome.” She certainly looks very flushed and excited and it occurs to me, not for the first time, that she can get quite worked up when she really cares about something.
“Ollie! Ollie! Roders! Come on, girls. We can still do it.” Penny collects the powder compacts and the whistle goes for the second half. It has already been the most successful game in the school’s history—0–7 was their previous best half-time score—but St Belters start the half as if they intend to change all that. Urged on by their coach who is adding to the amount of liquid in the air by foaming at the mouth they come at us—very appropriately—in waves.
Napum is fantastic, but how long can we hold out? Fiona pretends to lose a contact lens she does not wear and Eliza twice collapses dramatically on the only dry patch of field but these are merely delaying tactics. The umpire warns us grimly that she intends to add on all time for stoppages. Penny appreciates the danger because I see her move closer to the touch line near the goal we are defending. As I watch she seems to be dragging a hose pipe out of the way.
“Watch it, Knickers!” I wake up only just in time to trip the St Belters left inner who is on the point of flashing past me.
“Foul!”
“Play the game, St Rodence!”
“Well played,” says Rumna as she trots past me. “Keep pressuring them.”
I drop back into our goal area and realise just how unplayable the pitch is becoming. It does have a steep slope and the rain is still pouring down but it is amazing how the water is collecting. The free hit fizzes into a small lake and everybody slashes at it as if frolicking in the waves at Frinton.
“Aaaargh!” Another St Belters player goes down clutching her head and their coach rushes onto the field.
“This is ridiculous!” she storms. “The game will have to be moved to another field. This pitch is giving these—these savages an unfair advantage. My girls’ superior skills are being blunted.”
“Absolute nonsense!!” shrieks Penny who appears on the scene with Elliot Ness swiftness. “My girls had to play into this goal. You didn’t hear us complain.”
“It wasn’t as bad, then.”
“Really! How feeble can you get? Perhaps you’d like to surrender the game?”
“Never! St Belters doesn’t know the meaning of the word surrender.”
“Just as I thought. A load of illiterates,” whispers Eliza, loud enough for everybody to hear. A mild scuffle has to be broken up before the umpire decides that the game will continue on the same pitch.
The whole of the goal area is now a lake and it is this that helps the game enter a telling phase. A group of players are hacking at each other and—occasionally—the ball when I suddenly feel something under my foot. I bend down and—there it is! A solid round object with a few lumps bashed out of it. In the sea of spray that surrounds me it is difficult to see what anybody is doing and I quickly pick the ball up and slip it down the front of my tunic—Ooh! It is cold. I have half a mind to leave it there until the match is abandoned but my sporting instinct gets the better of me—also the realization that a school as large as St Belters must have another ball.
Rumna is just coming back on the field having replaced the stick which she broke over the head of the once tricky left inner and I quickly retrieve the ball and throw it to her. Rumna is no slouch and before St Belters realise what is happening she is streaking up the field. She dribbles past one girl, two girls, enters the goal area and—WACK! The board at the back of the goal snaps like a broken toothpick. I try and jump in the air but it is difficult when you are standing ankle deep in muddy water. It is an amazing thing but although it has stopped raining the water still seems to be rising. I wonder if the goal area is situated over a spring? I look over to the touch line to see Penny’s reaction to our goal but she has retired into the trees. Overcome with emotion, I suppose.
“Come on, Roders! We’ve got to keep them out!”
“How much longer is there, ma’am?”
The umpire looks at her watch. “Twenty minutes.”
Twenty minutes! We will never be able to last that long. Most of our team are already on their knees. We wouldn’t be able to hold out if the rest of the game was played in a swimming pool. When I look around me I think it is going to be played in a swimming pool. The water is creeping up towards the half way line.
“There’s only one thing for it,” says Eliza. “Number forty-nine.”
“Right,” says Fiona.
I don’t have time to ask them what they’re talking about because St Belters sweep back to the attack. Minutes pass with us holding on desperately and then—“AAArrgh!!”
“Gosh! I am sorry, umpire. Are you all right?” Fiona’s hockey stick has nearly taken off the umpire’s left hand.
“You’d better have a look at it, Liza.” Liza takes the umpire’s wrist in her hands and feels it tenderly.
“Liza’s our first aid expert,” says Fiona comfortingly.
“I don’t think there’s anything broken,” says Eliza. “You didn’t get biffed on the head, did you? You look a bit dazed.”
“I’m all right.” The umpire flexes her stiff upper lip. “Come on, let’s get on with the game.”
“How jolly brave,” says Rumna. “St Rodence. Three cheers for the umpire. Hip. hip—”
“Pheeeep!” The umpire drops the ball and we’re off again.
“I can’t go on,” I gasp. “I’ve had it. I’m all in.”
“Hang on, Miss Dixon—I mean, Knickers. There’s only another couple of minutes.”
“A couple of minutes!?” I wheeze. “There’s nearly twenty!”
“No. Liza altered the umpire’s watch. Didn’t you see?”
Fiona skips off to flatten the St Belters right wing and I am left standing in amazement.
There is hardly time for an ugly brawl to break out in the deepest part of the goal area before Fiona’s penetrating voice is heard again. “How much longer, umpire?” The umpire tells Rumna to get off the girl she is standing on, and looks at her watch. Then she looks at her watch again.
