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It had taken Rhys more than forty years to get it right, even though he was terrifyingly competent, so maybe there was hope. Maybe you didn’t always end up alone with your cat. Who was being looked after by Rhys and Zora this week, and hopefully not eating Casey’s bunnies.
Wait. Minute 66, and still nothing happening, but a big, bulky man in blue and white stripes was trotting off, and somebody else was trotting on. And the crowd was clapping, because it was Luke, and he was a star. An unlikely, battered, locked-down star who’d never look for the spotlight, who only wanted to do his job.
There was an Aussie on the team, and a South African, and even an American. There was also a Kiwi. Hayden stood up, not caring how it looked, raised his hands over his head, and applauded.
That’s my man, he said in his head to nobody. And he’s everything.
CHAPTER 20
The Man
Luke hated the bench. Whenever he was riding the pine, he was like a sheepdog in the back of the ute, panting hard, tail wagging like mad, every fiber of his being longing to get out there amongst it.
Fifteen to six didn’t matter. Fourteen minutes left didn’t matter. What mattered was this moment right now, when he was taking his place in the scrum, getting his body centered and low, so he could drive up into his opposite number. The scrums up to now had been rubbish, and he needed to fix that.
“Come on, boys,” he told the others. “Let’s get it right.” The scrum was all about cohesion.
Crouch. Bind. Set. His mantra since the age of eight. All the angles of force in the scrum came through the tighthead prop. He was the cornerstone of the whole structure, and that was the way Luke liked it.
He didn’t have to look to know when the ball came in. He felt the moment, and he drove up under the loosehead with all his might and felt him giving way, clearing space for Racing’s hooker to get the ball with his foot and send it back. And just like that, they had what they’d needed most: time and space for the Number Eight to get the ball away to the halfback, for the backs to get into position, for the game to open up.
After that, it was all his jobs, which amounted to two words: domination and intimidation. The one place he didn’t feel too big, because being the biggest was the point. Hitting the ruck to help out his teammate, smashing his opponent and driving him off the ball, moving fast, keeping his legs going, driving forward.
Power comes from the lower body.
Lifting in the lineout, hoisting the tallest man on the team high into the air to catch the ball, then setting him carefully down again, the reason you pushed all that tin in the gym. And finally, when the first-five kicked out a long penalty in the seventy-second minute that crossed the touchline inside Pau’s 22 …
The maul. Henri Jaconde had the ball, was turned backward to the opposition, his legs driving, moving. Luke was beside him, bringing the power on one side while the loosehead drove on the other, and the rest of the forwards piled in behind even as Pau drove back at them with all their strength.
It was like pushing a concrete wall, but you pushed anyway, because that was your job, and this was your team. His ear being jammed painfully into his head, his entire body straining, and his legs moving. Moving. One step. Two. Five. A locomotive on the track, driving on.
Power comes from the lower body.
Behind him, he could hear the shouts from the halfback, a little Aussie who was running both his legs and his mouth, as halfbacks did. As Aussies did. Luke didn’t need encouragement. He just needed to push, so he did.
Again, when the ball went back, hand over hand, to the halfback, he felt it and disengaged, running in support so he’d get to the breakdown fast, his legs still fresh, his chest heaving. The backs ranged out now, running their lines eight meters from the tryline. Trying it on in the middle, and the halfback yipping again.
A chance at the left, and they were taking it. Smooth, now, that they were free to play their game. A bullet shot from the halfback’s hands, in and out of the winger’s, the one Pau would have counted on to take it in. Off to the Number Eight instead, the big man running the tramlines just inside the field of play, putting his head down and his arm out. In and out of one man’s grasp, the other bouncing off from the force of that fend. Over the line, diving, sliding, and Luke could feel the grin on the man’s face behind the mouthguard, the joy of it. He was thumping him on the back himself, then trotting back to get set for the conversion.
A tricky kick from the corner. The first-five, a South African with the funniest technique you’d ever seen, clasping his hands together, wriggling his hips, looking up at the posts, down at the ball, then at the posts again, until you wanted to scream at him to get on with it.
But when he kicked the ball, it went through. The flags went up, and it was 13 to 15 with two minutes to play, and Racing would get the ball again on the kickoff.
One more chance.
Now or never.
Hayden wasn’t thinking about Christmas anymore. He wasn’t thinking about chocolate croissants or shopping or Picasso paintings with weird eyeballs.
He was just watching. Hands clenched together, breath coming hard.
His brother-in-law had been an elite rugby player, and his new brother-in-law was an elite rugby coach. It wasn’t that he’d never watched the game. It was just that he’d only watched the exciting parts: the lithe, nimble backs, passing and kicking and running, shifting direction on a dime, looking so athletic.
The forwards were a different story, and Luke was a whole different book. Impossibly strong, because they were doing a scrum again, on defense this time, and Racing was pushing Pau backward, then driving them off the ball. One person as the fulcrum of that lever. The one who’d taken two weeks off, had flown for twenty-four hours a couple of days ago, and had sat on the bench tonight for almost seventy minutes.
The backs must have picked up that new resolve, too, because after a game of dropped passes and missed opportunities, they were firing. Passing and catching and running, being tackled and getting up to pass and catch and run again. Meter by meter, down to the 10. To the 22. And getting nowhere.
None of that passing and catching now. Too risky, as the hooter sounded for 80 minutes. As soon as Racing lost possession, that would be the game. Instead, the forwards held on. One of them carrying the ball, getting tackled, and another picking it up and trying his hand, probing the line for a break that wasn’t there.
