Playing Offside by Jax Calder
Tyler
“You ready for this?” Decan grinned at me.
“As ready as I’ll ever be,” I replied.
“Hasta la vista, baby.”
“I never broke the law. I am the law!”
It was fast becoming our pregame ritual, to hype each other with our favorite movie lines.
“Bloody teenagers.” Macca rolled his eyes from his locker next to mine.
I’d actually turned twenty last week, but I decided not to point this out to the 250-pound rugby player who crunched people for a living and spent his free time hunting wild pigs armed with only a knife. Despite the opinions of everyone who’d called me a loudmouth over the years, I did have some survival instincts.
Instead, I turned my attention to getting ready. It still gave me a thrill bigger than a Disneyland ride to pull on the Greens jersey. The stretch of the fabric over my shoulders, the number ten proudly stamped on my back. I was a starter for a Supreme Rugby team, a professional rugby player. Living the dream.
“Good luck out there, kiddo.” Banksy chuffed my shoulder as he came past to grab some strapping tape.
“Thanks.” I concentrated on lacing my boots, trying to stop my hands from shaking. But they trembled more than a cockroach with Black Flag aftershocks.
Shitballs. I wasn’t normally this freaked out before a game.
But this was no ordinary game. This was it. The ultimate test.
Because tonight, I was up against the best. Aiden Jones was in a different league to all the other first fives I’d played against so far. The starting first five for New Zealand. Named the world’s best rugby player for the past two seasons.
By holding my own against Jones, I’d prove to the New Zealand selectors that I deserved to make the training squad. And I wanted that more than anyone had ever wanted anything in the history of this world.
I hadn’t needed to watch the prep tape that Coach Wiru had sent me. I’d studied Aiden Jones’s plays over the years closer than the Pope studied the Bible. I knew everything there was to know about the guy and his game. I’d even read his recently published biography, although the idea of me voluntarily reading a book would probably have shocked my old English teachers into an early grave.
Coach Wiru came into the room and gave us our pregame talk. We needed to match them upfront, try to spread the ball quickly, create space for the backs. Rugby 101.
I pumped my arms and legs, trying to get my muscles moving and get rid of some of the tension inside me.
Decan slid into place behind me as we lined up to run out.
“May the Force be with you,” he said.
My breath came faster than normal. It felt like I had a pet anaconda living in my guts, squeezing everything there.
“Go ahead, make my day,” I managed to reply.
Loud boos filled the stadium as we ran out onto the field. This was what happened when you came to Christchurch, where they were fanatical about their rugby and one-eyed in their support for the Marauders. It would take someone braver than The Rock to be sitting in the crowd in a Greens jersey tonight.
This far south, the May night air bit like a rabid dog. I slapped my hands on my thighs, trying to wake up my muscles and keep them warm, while we waited for the Marauders to emerge from the tunnel.
The music amped up with the Marauders’ anthem, and the crowd roared and stamped their feet.
I turned to where the Marauders’ players were running out onto the field. My rapid breath frosted the air as I scanned through the black-and-red players spreading across the field.
And there he was.
Tossing the ball back and forward with two of his teammates, looking cooler than an ice cube in Antarctica.
Despite his nickname of the Ice King, I personally put Aiden Jones on the other end of the heat spectrum. Because he was hot. There was no other way to describe him. That square jaw, the dark hair, those green eyes. Hot. Hot. Hot.
He’d been my go-to jerk off fantasy since I’d discovered that hand plus cock equaled a whole lot of fun.
Maybe I should whisper that fact to him halfway through a tackle tonight. It might be enough to crack some of that ice, put him off his game. I snorted to myself because yeah, outing myself in my first season playing professional rugby was up there on the crazy spectrum with the idea of Macca running for prime minister.
I’d actually met Aiden Jones once when I was sixteen, having queued in line for an hour in a sweaty mall to get him to sign my New Zealand rugby jersey.
Struggling to control my breathing, I’d put my jersey on the table with a hoarse, “Can you sign this please?”
His face was serious, a line creasing his forehead as he’d signed his name using a silver pen across the black fabric.
“Thanks, mate. That’s going straight to the pool room,” I’d said as I scooped it up. Then cringed. Shit. Faced with a chance to say something meaningful to my hero and instead I’d quoted an Australian cult-classic movie The Castle, where the main character put everything of value in the room with the pool table.
But then a miracle happened. A smile slowly spread across his face, tweaking a dimple next to the corner of his mouth. At the time I thought I’d known everything there was to know about the guy, but I’d never realized he had a dimple. Maybe because he never smiled when he was being interviewed.
His eyes met mine for a second. “Good movie.”
“Yeah.” My voice had come out in some kind of frothy version of itself.
His gaze had moved on to the next person waiting in line behind me, and I’d walked away in a daze. Aiden Jones had smiled at me. We liked the same movie. He’d touched something I’d touched! In my head, I’d practically married us off.
The flat look he gave me now as he got ready for the kickoff indicated he wasn’t quite as excited about the idea of me as I was of him.
His kick went deep, and we scrambled back as the Marauders came at us like a wave of black and red.
The slapping sound of flesh colliding with flesh, the night air filled with the puffs of huffing men, the smell of grass and mud and sweat.
I loved rugby.
My first touch came as our halfback Jeremiah cleared the ball from a maul and threw it straight at me.
Now was my chance to put an early stamp on the game. I spotted a half opening in their line and put on a burst of speed, trying to make a break.
But suddenly, Aiden Jones was there, gripping my waist and pulling me to the ground in a hard tackle, knocking the breath out of my lungs. I instinctively rolled over into a protective position around the ball, stopping him from reaching over to wrench the ball from my grasp.
I was pinned beneath Aiden Jones, his breath rough against my throat. And okay, maybe this was a replay of some of my fantasies, although without all the cameras focused on us and our teammates all around and the thousands of spectators cheering and jeering.
Mateo cleared the ball away, and Jones’s weight suddenly lifted off me. I staggered to my feet and flicked a look at Jones, but his face was completely impassive as he jogged away to catch up with the play.
We made a few meters of progress, but then one of our locks turned it over, and the Marauders were attacking us with ball in hand, spreading it along their backline.
Jones got the ball, and there was no way I was letting him break through our line of defense.
I nailed him in a tackle, putting extra force into my shoulders as I took him down, gripping onto his jersey for dear life.
He managed to cling to the ball, and his forwards cleared the ball, but, I noticed with satisfaction, he was slightly slow to get back to his feet.
“You all right there?” I asked.
He gave me a blank stare back before jogging away.
Blood pumped in my ears. I wanted Aiden Jones to react to me in some way. I wanted some indication he’d actually noticed me, rather than just seeing me as another opposition player to stomp over.
In my first Supreme Rugby game against the Clansmen, their halfback had heckled me about being a know-nothing newbie. It had put him off his game when I’d got in a few good jibes back. But I’d learned growing up that the best defense was offense. And I’d also discovered that if you wore the cloak of a smartass, people seldom bothered to look at what was underneath. As I had a whole bunch of ugly stuff I didn’t want to share with the world, I’d honed my smartass ability as much as my rugby skills.
Over the next twenty minutes of play—when neither side gained any advantage in the kind of back and forth grind that sapped energy but didn’t result in more than a penalty apiece on the scoreboard—I tried to get a rise out of Jones.
“Dude, I can hear your arthritic bones creaking.
“Didn’t they find a frozen ice man in Siberia or something? I’m pretty sure he was a close relative of yours.”
Jones didn’t react to my comments. He didn’t even look in my direction.
His lack of response bothered me like an itch that’s too deep under your skin to scratch. It made me double down on my efforts.
“I actually reckon Ice Princess suits you more than Ice King. You’d look great in a tiara.”
Jones finally turned to me as the teams reset for the lineout. “Focus on your own game, kiddo.”
I bristled. There was not a single ounce of respect in his deep voice. And despite me having been pushing him to respond, I hadn’t counted on the way his disapproval would make me feel.
I forced a smirk on my face. “You want me to focus more on kicking your ass? You sure about that?”
He gave me a cool stare. Suddenly, the reason for his nickname became clear. It was like having someone apply ice to my balls, I could feel them shrinking.
But then the ball was thrown in from the sideline, and the game was back on.
The score was tight at halftime, seventeen-thirteen to us. In the dressing room, our captain Kinyard whacked me over the head. “Stop wasting energy yapping at Jones. You’re not going to get a response. He’s called the Ice King for a reason.”
Jansen snorted. “We were in Aussie for the Bledisloe Cup, and a snake crawled through the window into the dressing room. He didn’t even flinch. That guy would stay cool through a nuclear meltdown.”
Yeah, thanks for the story. I’d already spent forty minutes learning exactly how unflappable the guy was.
We ran back out onto the field to even louder boos from the fans.
Right from the start, the second half was different. But not in a good way.
I don’t know what kind of riot act the Marauders’ coach gave his team at halftime, but they came back fired up. From the moment they touched the ball, they were lighting up the field like they were pyromaniacs.
And I was getting a masterclass in first five play. Jones was everywhere, breaking through the line, doing perfect little chips over the top, basically making me look like a Muppet. And not one of the cool Muppets, like Fozzie Bear or Animal. I was looking more and more like Snuffleupagus.
Even when I did get the ball, I couldn’t do anything useful with it.
Up till now, I’d been able to split the opposition line like Moses parted the Red Sea. But tonight, none of my godly powers were working. I think I’d spot a gap, only to have Jones slam into me from an unexpected angle, stopping my momentum.
He seemed to anticipate every move I was about to make before I made it. Did the guy have a receptor that picked up direct signals from my brain? Or did he have some kind of rugby psychic powers?
Because it felt like a thought of my next play would barely fly into my head and he would be there, covering it.
Frustration overtook me, and I started to make mistakes. Dumb errors: fumbling the ball leading to a turnover, missing a tackle. My mistakes stood out more because Jones didn’t make any. He was cool, calm, and clinical.
The Marauders ran in two unanswered tries, and the game started slipping away.
Damn. We were going to lose.
Disappointment rose inside me like lava in a volcano.
I couldn’t help glancing at the stands. Somewhere there, my father would be sitting with the small group of Greens supporters who’d made their way down from Auckland.
Dad wouldn’t say anything to me after the game about all the ways I’d screwed up. And somehow, that was always worse than if he yelled. Rugby was the only thing I did that made my father proud of me. In all other areas of my life, I was more disappointing than the final episode of Game of Thrones.
Five minutes to go and the ball came to me. Jones was already looming to cover me, but I gritted my teeth.
Right. This time.
I stepped to the right, dodging through the halfhearted tackle of the Marauders’ lock.
Jones bore down on me, but I did a chip kick over the top of this head. The ball connected with my foot perfectly, and suddenly, it was man on man, just Aiden Jones and me in a foot race, the ball like a bouncing Holy Grail we both wanted.
My lungs screamed insults at me, but I forced myself to sprint as hard as I could down the field.
The ball bounced up perfectly, straight into my arms, like it was my lover reunited after a long separation.
Aiden’s fingertips grasped at the edge of my jersey and got a hold, yanking me back, but my momentum carried me over the line. I grounded the ball triumphantly. Try. Five points! I threw the ball up in the air in celebration, as all my teammates swamped around me to slap me on my back.
With the game out of our grasp, it was the very definition of consolation points, but hey, at least it made the score line look slightly more respectable.
As I jogged back to the halfway mark, the itch came back. I directed the smirk on my face straight at Jones. “Good effort chasing me down.”
He didn’t respond, although for a second his cool façade cracked, his jaw tightening. Because we both knew that despite the fact he’d gotten the better of me nearly all game, that was the highlight that was going to get replayed over and over again.
Fingers crossed it was enough to convince the selectors that I deserved a spot in the training squad. And I’d get another shot to prove myself against Aiden Jones.