Chasing a Rugby Dream by James Hook

Author:James Hook
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Birlinn

AIMING HIGH

Jimmy adopted the Owen Farrell approach first.

He took four steps back from the ball, followed by two to the left. He then looked down at the ball with a sideways tilt of his head, before looking up to the posts, then back to the ball, then up to the posts for a final time, tracing an imaginary line along which the ball would travel.

He took one final look down at the ball, before moving forward smoothly, planting his left foot next to the tee on the ground, pulling his right leg back before swinging it through the ball. The ball flew off Jimmy’s foot, straight as an arrow and right between the posts.

‘Yes!’ shouted Jimmy to himself, as he watched the ball fly over the cross bar, before jogging to collect it so that he could repeat the process again.

Jimmy decided he was going to start with five kicks from in front of the posts, then move five yards to the right to kick five more, then move five yards over to the left of where he had started to kick a final five. Jimmy’s personal target was to see how many of the fifteen he would kick. Even if he managed fourteen out of fifteen, that wouldn’t be good enough. He would start again until he scored all fifteen in succession.

He kicked the first five like a dream. All five kicks were pretty much spot on and flew over. His next five were pretty good too – all high, all accurate, all over. It was just the last five that caused Jimmy an issue. He didn’t know if it was because he was trying to curl the ball in from right to left, which was the natural angle from the left side of the pitch, or that he was somehow lined up wrong, but he began hooking the ball. Not so badly that he was missing, but badly enough that they were all just creeping nearer to the left-hand post. Jimmy tried to correct it by only taking one step to the left after marching back from the ball, but the ball was still moving too much towards the left-hand post. But at least he was still slotting them over.

He jogged behind the posts to collect the ball after successful kick number fourteen. He was really starting to sweat because, as he only had one ball, he had to jog after it each time he kicked it. When he jogged back to kick number fifteen, he was breathing heavily and as he knelt down to place the ball on the tee, his legs felt as though they were beginning to take the strain. Jimmy had forgotten that he’d not really done any exercise for five weeks and the fatigue in his thighs was starting to show.

He finished placing the ball and took his mark. He did his Farrell glancing routine, but when he looked at the ball for the final time, he suddenly felt a little pressure. If

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