2.2 - Ian Evans

2.

Raffi picked me up and we drove to Chester. He was excited; I was nervous. I was a bag of nerves. There was so much riding on this one morning!

We arrived at Chester's training ground - literally a business park owned by a credit card company - and I got changed. Raffi hadn't been joking about his boxing training - when he took his shirt off I saw a phenomenal set of abs. Way to make a dude feel puny, bro.

The place was so strange. It was soulless. Even the shittest football ground has a kind of residual life force to it. This... thing... was a wide, flat, two-story building full of offices, and out the back a couple of grass pitches and a couple of artificial ones. The pitches were obviously intended for use by the staff of the credit card company. I wondered if any of those guys had talent. If I ended up signing for Chester it'd be easy to go and scout them. Maybe I could get a fancy credit card, too. I bet credit card companies had really attractive receptionists.

Don't get ahead of yourself, Max! Thinking about the prize was fruitless. I had to focus on the process.

And the process was: do things you know you're good at, and nothing else.

I took one deep breath, left the building, and listened as my boots clattered - stupendous volume - across the concrete paving stones. As soon as my studs sank into the grass, all my nerves evaporated. I knew everything would be okay. MD was already in place and he threw a ball towards me. I let it roll onto my right foot and did a couple of kick-ups. Absolutely no pain. Green green green! As long as I avoided really hard shots, I'd be laughing.

I jogged around a bit, getting closer to the half-way line as I did. There was already a little gaggle of people there. My ankle felt fine; all that resting had paid off.

The first thing I did was introduce myself to Ian Evans. I'd only ever seen him from far away, so he always had quite an insubstantial quality. He was abstract. He was the notion of Ian Evans. But up close, he was substantial. Concrete. Formidable. He was the same height as me, but broader, chunkier, more powerful, more menacing. His features were bigger than normal, like a CGI artist's vision of an orc, or whatever the blue people are called in Avatar. The nose was broad. The cheeks and mouth shaped by years of football management into a permanent grimace. The eyes blue, watchful, sharp, snarling. His hair had started to recede, but at some point it had screamed 'no surrender!' and where it remained, it was magnificent.

His presence was titanic. He dominated the scene to an unbelievable degree.

He gave me a firm handshake - not obnoxious, not macho - and regarded me with a look that showed he had not heard of me. He didn't know about the under 14s incident. I had a clean slate. But by god, I'd have to work hard to impress him. Well, my dude, I got you covered; the hard work had started two weeks ago.

I shook hands with one of his first-team coaches. Vimsy, they called him. Was he in line to be the next manager? I was dubious; he didn't have anywhere near the charisma of his boss.

Chester's Head Physio, Dean, was there. He - loudly, as we'd planned - told me off for not going to get a check-up on my injuries. I promised him that I'd taken it easy.

Then came what we in Manchester like to call the coup de grâce - the arrival of my 'old friend' Henri Lyons. There was another round of greetings and handshakes.

Ian Evans gave MD a long, hard look. He understood that he was being played, but he didn't mind it. Clubs weren't supposed to negotiate with players from other clubs. It was called 'tapping up' and was illegal. The fact that the best striker in the league had turned up 'to watch his friend's trial' - well, it was the kind of scam Evans had seen and done countless times.

"As everyone knows," MD declared when everyone was ready, "Max had a bit of an ankle injury recently, so the plan is for him to show some moves and give us an idea of his skills. Raffi's in peak condition so we can ask a bit more of him! Dean, would you mind getting us some raw physical data?"

The physio made us do some very tiny drills. Some things were almost like a medical - stability tests, resistance tests. Then long runs up and down the pitch - apparently, football people liked to judge the way players ran, as though they were horses. Finally, some short sprints, then some sprints with little turns at the end. My goal during the whole thing had been to match Raffi. To keep up with him, or be only slightly behind. I matched him easily, but found he was already blowing hard. Me? Fresh as a daisy.

Next we did some basic ball work. Me floating some crosses in for Raffi to head into the goal. When it was my turn to score the headers, Dean went nuts. Pretend nuts, you understand. He was doing what MD had told him. "Max, you can't head the ball! Not without a mask. No chance. And no tackling either. Doctor's orders!"

"Gosh," I said. "That's a shame. How are we going to check Raffi's crossing ability?"

Vimsy was about to say something but Evans stopped him. He wasn't enjoying the performance, exactly, but he appreciated it.

"Oh, I have an idea!" said Henri. "My boots are in my car. I could help out? I've been known to score the odd header." He gave us his most dashing smile, and fuck, I finally understood the phrase 'he swept me off my feet'.

"What do you think, Ian?" said MD.

This was the moment. If Evans had the slightest interest in signing Henri, we'd find out. If he wasn't interested, we'd find out. It was such a low-stakes way to do it that everyone could save face if the answer was no. "I think it's a great idea," said Evans. "I've always admired Monsieur Lyons." Henri zoomed away to his car and was back in seconds, ready to play.

So that was that then. If Evans wanted Henri Lyons, there really wasn't much jeopardy left in the day. MD would tell Evans he'd have to sign me first, then Henri would come. And if he was going to sign me, they might as well sign the clearly superior Raffi, too. A good deal for the club. A coup. Fresh faces, fresh blood. And in Lyons, a bona fide goal machine.

This was the greatest criminal enterprise of all time. If this was a movie, it would be one of the ones where they plan the crime and carry it off smoothly. No alarms, no surprises. Ah... Bliss.

Raffi spent a few minutes doing head-high crosses for Henri to crash into the goal. Henri's heading was thrilling. Poetry in motion. Evans was purring.

Great. So we'd done heading. We'd done pace. Next up was passing.

We had two wire men set up. Wire men. I don't know what the manufacturers call them. Imagine a piece of metal in the shape of a man that you can use as an opponent in training sessions. We stood two of them a yard apart and did a drill where two of us tried to pass the ball through the gap while getting further and further apart.

I easily beat Raffi, then I easily beat Henri.

Henri beat Raffi.

Then I crushed them both again.

Smasho and Nice One turned up. MD had invited them - at my suggestion - to pretend to be shocked at how good I was. It was all part of the scene. It was all scripted. They were happy to oblige, since we'd openly confessed that the plan was for me to help out with the youth teams.

I was about to launch into the next phase of the heist when things went sour. The twist. This wasn't the 'everything goes smoothly' movie. It was the 'casino manager knew you were coming and prepared accordingly' movie.

Ian Evans whistled at us to stop. We trudged over to find out why, while Vimsy dashed onto the pitch to remove the wire men and cones we'd laid out. "Lads," he said. "When MD said I should come and watch some potential signings get put through their paces, I said sure, why not. And it's been... amusing watching you fannying around. But we lost 3-0 yesterday, so I canceled the team's day off." He whistled again, and the entire Chester FC first team squad burst out of the building and jogged onto the pitch. They surrounded us, like police circling the criminals near the end of the film. Caught red-handed. Not such a foolproof plan after all. Evans continued. "So why not kill two birds with one stone? Let's have a quick game. Two 25-minute halves. Extra session for this shower of shite who call themselves professional players. And a trial for a couple of lads who think they can do better. To hell with this farce. If you want to catch my eye, catch my eye by playing. Mister Lyons, you're exempt. I know all about you. I'd have you in my team any day of the week and twice on Sundays." He fixed his underperforming team with his heat vision. "The rest of you, you'll run the miles you should have run yesterday. You'll press and harry and get stuck in like you should have YESTERDAY."

Physio Dean stepped forward, genuinely flustered. "Ian! Raffi Brown is fair game, if he wants to play, but Max can't join a proper match. He's ankle's not fully healed - you can tell from how softly he kicks the ball - and we haven't checked his eye socket. It could be fractured!"

Evans didn't look at him. He stared right into my soul, stepped in front of me, loomed over me somehow even though our eyes were level. "If he wants to play for Chester, he'll play right here, right now." He gave MD a quick blast of angry energy, then turned back to me. He pushed me in the chest. "So what's it going to be, Maxy No-Thumbs?"

Oh my shitting god.

He knew.

He knew who I was. Somehow he'd known what I was plotting. Every minute that he'd watched me dick around was a minute where he was taking the piss out of me. And now he was all up in my face, giving me verbals, giving me shit, pressing my buttons.

Well, reader. What I did was simple. I took a deep breath, and very calmly and with full emotional control explained that I'd be happy to play but wouldn't challenge for headers or tackles because that would be all a bit silly, wouldn't it.

Hang on, I'm not sure that's right. Let me check my diary from that day. Ah, yes. It didn't happen like that. It actually went a little bit like this:

He pushed me in the chest. "So what's it going to be, Maxy No-Thumbs?"

I pushed myself into his hand so that he’d have to back off. This elderly man. He didn't budge. He was made of fucking iron. "I'm up for it. I'm down for it. I'll play anywhere, any time.” I’d tried to break into a Vegas casino and been caught. This caper was over. The only thing to do in such a situation… is raise the stakes. “But let's make it interesting. You manage the first team. 4-4-2 maybe. And I'll manage the rest. Your reserves and my mates. An amateur. A striker who hasn't played for months. And a guy with no fucking thumbs." I was right in his grille now, pointing both thumbs into my face. It was hot. It was sweaty. The fan fiction would be epic.

His sneering face sneered even more. "Player manager, is it?" He laughed. It sounded like he was scraping burnt flesh from a cheap pan. "You're on. Saddle up, cowboy."

"Yippee ki-yay," I said, backing away with my arms spread wide.

I was going to shove 4-4-2 so far up Ian Evans's arse it'd have to be removed by a team of surgeons working round the clock.

This wasn't a trial any more. This was a tribulation.