Debut
Short Story
The stadium was filled to the brim. Punters of all ages packed out the sections, bays and rows. Chants rose up and washed over the pitch — the largest amateur choir in the world. The lights were heating up to replace the light of an ailing sun.
Marnus Bontempelli, on debut, was shitting himself.
The thousands of eyeballs that would soon be on him, with millions more watching from home had him thinking that perhaps he’d made a giant mistake. That the dream he’d been dreaming since he was a young lad was only now just revealing itself to have been a nightmare all along. That any moment he might wake, sweating, gasping, reeling in air as fast as he could, and in the gloom of his bedroom on sheets soaked through, think how could he possibly want this?
But the crowd started up another chant and he knew he wasn’t dreaming. The two men aside him clapped him on the back. “You’ve got this,” one said. The other nodded and added, “This is what you’ve been training for.” And Marnus thought back to all of those long days and nights at the pitch, trading energy for exhaustion and experience. Refining each movement, each action until its mechanicalness surprised him.
The referees walked out on to the pitch. The players took their positions. The whistle went. The roar shook the stadium’s roots.
