After that, I checked myself. I played hard. But that didn’t mean I had to put up with shit from anyone. Particularly Coach Millwood, who seemed to make it his mission to mess up my day.
I sat down on the bench, taking a drink from the water bottle when I was joined by Mario Bottari, who had been the First Team Coach for as long as I had been playing for Chester. Jack’s only saving grace was that he kept on a lot of the existing staff, only bringing with him his assistant manger, Fred Coburn, from his last club in Germany.
“You’ve got to stop letting him get to you. He’s trying to push you. To see how easy it is for you to snap,” Mario lectured in his heavily accented English. He’d been living in the UK since he was fifteen, but hearing him talk, you would think he’d just arrived yesterday. I tended to think the accent was put on a little thick. Mario liked to play up the Italian lothario bit with the ladies.
“Maybe he needs to stop winding my gears. I don’t need this shit,” I said through clenched teeth, wiping my forehead with a towel.
“He may be a jerk, but he’s doing a good job. Even you can see that. You wouldn’t be in the Premier League this year without him,” Mario pointed out.
I grunted in response, not wanting to agree with him, no matter how right he was.
Because Mario was right.
Millwood had turned a mid table team into champions. Being promoted last season had been a dream no one dared to have. Chester had clawed its way to the top and now here we were, preparing for our very first season in the biggest football league in the world.
Chester Athletic had never been a Premier League team. Never gotten close. Until now. And as much as I couldn’t stand Jack Millwood personally, professionally, he got shit done.
He knew how to play the guys to get the most out of them. Me included.
Gaz had always used me as an attacking midfielder. It was the position I had been playing since my days playing youth football. I had been comfortable there. Two days on the job and Millwood changed my position to center forward. I had fought and argued with the decision. But in the end Millwood was right.
I was ace in the position. And with Craig Denham playing attacking midfield and Nolan Dubois as winger, there was no one who could stop us. I was confident of that.
Nolan had only transferred to Chester mid season last year from some shitty team in France. He had rubbed me the wrong way from the very beginning. He was a bell end. A complete tosser. But on the pitch, we played like we were in fucking love.
It was strange how two guys who couldn’t stand each other most of the time found a perfect unity during the game.
“Whatever. I’m hitting the showers,” I muttered, getting to my feet. Practice wasn’t over for another fifteen minutes but I had had enough.
I started to walk towards the dressing room when I heard my name being called.
“Bradley, hang on a second!”
Craig Denham ran across the pitch to catch up with me. I stopped, waiting for him.
“Marla wants to know if you’ll come to dinner,” he said, looking as though he’d rather be chewing nails than asking me.
Craig was a good friend. He had already been playing with Chester for a season when Gaz brought me on. We had clicked right away. Mostly because neither of us had a lot to say to one another.
But I had made my feelings about his wife pretty clear.
I didn’t like her.
When Craig had started dating one of the goal diggers we would see out in the club, I told him she was bad news. But he was more impressed with her fake tits than anything else she had going on. He didn’t seem to care that she was only after nabbing a footballer, it didn’t really matter who it was.
He wouldn’t listen. So he married her. And that sure as hell didn’t stop her from letting it known that she’d give him up in a heartbeat to nail a bigger fish.
At one time she had hoped I’d be that bigger fish. I had made it a point to put her firmly in check after a booze induced indiscretion gave her ideas.
Marla Denham spent a lot of time at the stadium during practices, or inviting the lads over for dinner that usually involved a bunch of her WAG wannabe friends and way too much booze.
One thing was for sure; she was fit as hell, even if it was hard to tell which parts of her real. She had dug her claws into Craig and hadn’t let go. Not until she could hitch a ride on something better. And poor Craig was too stupid to know any better. I was with him when he signed the paperwork on a nice house outside of town that he hoped to start a family in.
Craig was a good guy. He wanted kids and a happy life. I was pretty sure Marla wouldn’t do anything to ruin her body, especially get pregnant.
The last thing I wanted to do on my day off was spend time with Craig’s barracuda of a wife. But he was my friend so I had to be nice about it.
“Yeah, I’m pretty busy,” I lied.
