Family by Michael Calvin

Author:Michael Calvin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House

Chapter 12

From Scapegoat to Saviour

Steve Morison nearly got away with it. On another day, viewed through the veil of a comfortable win, his exchange of pleasantries with Wycombe’s Tommy Doherty would have been overlooked. But, brooding over the worst home performance of the season, Kenny Jackett scanned the DVD with the merciless clarity of a hawk seeking an easy meal in the hedgerows. Morison, his pet project, needed a reality check. He was losing respect within the dressing room, and provoking supporters who had turned impatience into performance art.

‘What type of centre forward are you going to be?’ he asked the striker he had rescued from the purgatory of Conference football. ‘What are you going to bring to this club? What can you guarantee us? You can’t stand up there at 6′2″ and not win headers. You can’t not close down, you can’t not chase. You’ve got to go out there and have a tear-up. What were you saying to that defender?’ Morison explained that he had turned sharply, and accidentally run into Doherty before the ball went for a throw. His reflex action was to apologise, laugh it off. ‘Sorry?’ exclaimed Jackett. ‘Sorry? You should have been saying to him, “You come near me again you cunt and I’ll snap you in two”. That is how it has got to be.’

The manager quickly drew the dividing line between street-corner theatre and unprofessional spite. ‘It’s all an act’, he told him, citing Bolton’s Kevin Davies as a striker who scored intermittently, yet justified his selection by contributing to the cause. ‘If the goals aren’t coming, what can you give the team? That’s your biggest issue. Funnily enough, if you start putting yourself about, being a handful for the team, the lads will go with you, because that’s what they want up there. The supporters will go with you, and the pressure for goals will be off. Then, suddenly the goals will go in. You will be thinking less about it, instead of over-analysing. You can think yourself worse, instead of better.’

Jackett allowed himself a contemplative period each morning, before the training ground came to life and the mobile began to ring. Two goals in Morison’s first eighteen appearances represented a significant test of faith in his ability to turn non-League water into wine. ‘Steve will start scoring goals’, he said, swirling tepid tea around a ceramic mug. ‘But he has to define what sort of player he wants to be. He’s built like a brick shithouse. He’s quick, he’s strong and he’s fit, yet in too many games he doesn’t play his weight. They won’t have that here, especially from someone like him, who looks like a Millwall player. He’s got to use his physical attributes.’

Morison’s penance began at Exeter, a road trip beyond the imagination of the elite. He braved rush-hour traffic on the M25, and was among the group scavenging coffee at a hotel in Slough at 9.00am. He squeezed on to the bus beside Jason Price, who had brought his own pillow.

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