Play the Game (26 page)

I was about to try and defend myself when Tess whirled around and did it for me.
‘I can’t believe you’d ask Edie to deliberately target a player. That’s not okay,
Justine. I bet Kathryn Fraser wouldn’t be too happy with that sort of coaching,’
she said quietly, making sure none of our teammates could hear her.

In any other situation I would have almost laughed at the look on Justine’s face.
Instead, I took a deep breath and told her, ‘I don’t want to play state netball if
I have to do things like that.’

‘Me either,’ said Tess, looking as fierce as ever.

Justine sort of crumbled. She went bright red, and was clearly really embarrassed.
‘I’m sorry. You’re right. I just wanted to beat them. I swear it won’t happen again,’
she said.

‘Okay,’ I told her, not wanting things to be too weird at training on Monday. Hopefully
we could all forget this.

As we walked off, Tess squeezed my hand. ‘It wasn’t really your fault that she landed
badly. You didn’t push her and you didn’t trip her. You might have bumped her, but
players do that all the time. That’s just trying to win the ball.’

I smiled at Tess’s reasoning. I knew she was trying to make me feel better, and it
was definitely helping. But I still wanted to apologise to the other player.

As I looked over to see if the girl was still on the bench, my stomach dropped. She
had a doctor with her. And that doctor was my mum. Great. Trust my mum to jump in
and start helping out the other team!

Mum was kneeling down, strapping the girl’s leg, when Tess and I walked up.

‘Edie! I was just explaining to Emma here that you’re my daughter.’

Emma looked up at me. I tried to work out if she was angry, but I couldn’t really
tell.

‘You okay?’ I asked.

There was a pause, then Mum answered for her. ‘She’ll be out for at least a month.’

Emma looked teary, and I felt even worse. ‘I’m sorry. I feel really awful that I made
you land like that,’ I said, even though Tess was elbowing me, trying to make me
stop talking. I think she was worried I’d get Justine in trouble, but I wasn’t that
stupid.

‘It’s not your fault. Not really. I probably shouldn’t have been playing on it anyway,’
said Emma.

‘Still, I’m sorry.’

I realised Mum was watching me strangely. It was like she knew something had happened
on the court, even if she wasn’t sure exactly what. ‘I keep telling you girls that
netball is bad for your joints,’ she said, making Tess and I groan. ‘Not now, Mum!’

She laughed. ‘Okay, fair enough.’

Then Emma straightened up. ‘Thanks for missing that last goal. I’d heard you were
a gun of a shooter. You must have been having an off day,’ she said, staring at me with a smile. I smiled
back.

‘I’ll make sure I’m better for the finals,’ she continued. ‘We can do it all again.’
She held her hand out for me to shake.

I shook her hand. ‘I look forward to it.’

‘I’ll see you at home, honey,’ said Mum, as Tess and I headed off to join the others.

‘You know what, I reckon after today Justine will never hassle us about anything
again!’ laughed Tess.

‘She’s probably terrified of you!’ I said.

‘She should be!’ She grinned, linking her arm through mine. ‘Chocolate cake?’

‘I thought you’d never ask!’

‘Bench me then,’ I said, pulling off my bib and handing it to Justine. ‘I’m not playing
like that.’

‘Fine,’ said Justine, yanking the bib out of my hand and passing it to Poppy. Even
though only seven players were needed on court, each state netball team had several
extra players. That way, if someone was injured, another player could step in.

I watched Justine talk to Poppy, wondering if she’d ask her to target the GD too,
or if she’d realised it wasn’t okay.

‘Edie? Are you sick?’ asked Tess, looking concerned.

But before I could answer her, Justine yelled for the team to get back on the court. The
siren had gone and the game was starting.

Tess kept looking over at me, but there was no way I could explain what had happened
while she was on the court. Besides, I didn’t want to wreck the game for her – although
that was fast happening anyway. The Warriors had stormed ahead, and their GD was shutting
down any attempt our attackers made to get the ball. I knew Tess was frustrated,
and I hoped she’d understand why I’d refused to target their player. I didn’t want
her to blame me if we lost, which was looking pretty likely at this stage. For a
second I wondered if I’d done the right thing. Without their GD we might have stood
a chance. I shook the thought off. I didn’t want to be responsible for injuring someone.

By the time the siren went at half-time, we were three goals down. I felt weird sitting
on the bench as the rest of the team came into the huddle. Tess called me over to
join in, but I shook my head. I didn’t want to have to explain myself to the rest
of the team.

As the game started again, I tried to work out what the Warriors’ plays were. They
positioned themselves differently to us, and moved the ball down the court in a slightly
unusual way. I figured the reason they kept winning was because nobody had quite
worked out how to shut them down. I noticed that their Wing Attack always seemed
to run to the same spot. If we could just beat her there, they’d be down a player.
I really wished that I was still on the court. I hated sitting here, watching my
team get beaten.

The netball fairy must have heard me. Meg, our Wing Defence, leapt up to intercept
a pass and she crashed down heavily. Her knee bent backwards. Even from the bench
I could tell it was bad. She screamed as she hit the ground, and the umpire blew
the whistle to stop the game as everyone surrounded her to see if she was okay. I
wanted to run on too, but I couldn’t. Not from the bench.

I watched Justine and Tess lift her up and support her as she hopped from the court,
crying. She couldn’t put any weight on her right leg. I really hoped she hadn’t torn
a ligament or something.

‘Edie, you’re on,’ yelled Justine, tossing me the WD bib as she helped Meg to the
bench.

I pulled a face. ‘I can’t play Wing Defence.’

‘Well, you’re not playing Goal Attack, and we need you,’ said Justine harshly.

I pulled on the bib. As I ran out onto the court, Tess grabbed my arm. ‘What is going
on?’

‘I’ll tell you later.’

She nodded. ‘Hope you’ve got a plan. We’re getting thrashed!’

A plan? Hardly. I hadn’t played this position since I was ten. I might have been
a natural attacker, but I certainly wasn’t a natural defender.

The whistle went and the game was back on. My WA was fast and pushy. Having seen
the way she always ran to the same side of the goal circle, my only thought was to
get there first and intercept. The first time I tried it, she had the ball away before
I had any chance of grabbing it, and they scored a goal. They were now four goals
up. We were in real trouble.

On their centre pass, I ran out fast. I knew exactly where she was going – I guess
that was the advantage of watching from the bench. I’d started to read the play differently.
I knocked the pass away and Maggie snatched it up. A quick pass back to me and I
lobbed it long to Tess in the circle. It was a crazy pass, but I knew Tess could
catch it. She did, and she scored. Now we were three down.

I realised I was trying to play attack from a defensive position, which was risky.
I had to try and defend as well. Besides, I had a lot to prove to Justine. I needed
to show her we could win without targeting injured players.

As I chased the WA down the court, I waited a split second for their Centre to pass
the ball off and then I leapt in front, snatching it away. I threw the ball to Maggie,
and she passed it to Becky, our Centre. Becky passed to Tess, who promptly shot another
goal. Two down.

As I jogged back for the centre pass, I saw Justine watching me. She nodded and shrugged,
which I gathered was some sort of weird apology. I knew we’d have to talk about what
happened later, but right now, I was going to smash this game as hard as I could.

On our next centre pass, I came right out, freeing Poppy up to run into the goal
third. It was a messy play, but it was effective, and Tess scored another goal. I
could feel the charge of our team as we began to realise we could actually win. Suddenly
everyone lifted. Maggie threw a beautiful lob to Tess, which she caught just inside
the circle. And from there she shot a perfect goal. The scores were level. This game
was ours.

With only a minute to go, Justine started yelling from the sidelines. Even she could
feel it. I knew we had to convert their next centre pass. As the whistle went, I
sprung out like I was being chased. Our defence was so good, the Warriors had no
one to pass to, and the umpire blew her whistle. They’d held the ball for more than
three seconds, so it was ours. I took the pass and threw it fast to Maggie, who then
bounce-passed to Tess. I expected Tess to take a shot, but instead she threw a sneaky
short pass to Poppy, who’d replaced me in Goal Attack. Poppy shot a beautiful goal,
putting us in front by one.

We’d just jogged back to the line when the siren sounded. We’d won the game.

I heard the cheers from the crowd as our team huddled close, and sang our team song.
We were all beaming. Even Justine broke into the huddle and joined in. She caught
my eye, smiled, and mouthed,‘I’m sorry.’ I just nodded. I knew there would be a proper
chat, but now wasn’t the time. We’d just beaten the top team – and we’d done it without
targeting anyone.

Tess handed out the jelly snakes. I grabbed an extra one and walked over to the bench,
where Meg was having her knee strapped – by my mum. She must have seen what had happened
and run down to help out.

‘Nice game, honey,’ said Mum, looking up from where she was tying off the bandage.

‘Thanks,’ I said, handing Meg a jelly snake. ‘You okay?’ She nodded. ‘Your Mum says
it’s not too bad. A couple of weeks maybe, and I’ll be back.’

‘Good, because Wing Defence is one hard position. We need you!’ I said, not wanting her to think that just because we’d won, she wasn’t
needed. She smiled at me. ‘You did okay in it. Amazing game, Edie.’