Chorzów

In one moment everything can change. The heat, the tension, the waves of sound beating against the inside of your ear, they can all change in a heartbeat. You can feel them building, rising, peaking and then just hovering there, a weight of expectation surrounding you, overlooking you. Bald John Green knew this phenomenon.

On another rainy day in Swindon the tension was rising. With twenty four minutes gone, Bald John Green took the ball down from a header, it spun delicately at his feet before he turned and drove past two Chorzów defenders. Storming in to the box like a man possessed, he banished the mediocrity that had preceded. He rifled his shot hard past the helpless keeper and the moment came. The tension doesn’t just change; it gets replaced by something different, something brand new.

John looked up to the stands from his position on the side-line and saw the jubilant supporters, who said friendlies don’t mean anything? It had always been John’s motto that no player is ever bigger than the team, but he couldn’t help but wonder about bald John Green. He was a gentleman and always tried to get everyone else involved but there was no denying he was just much more talented than anyone else at the club. In the last week alone, John had received two offers from much bigger clubs about signing him.

Moments later it happened again. Fat Lucas pumped the ball up the field where it bounced over the heads of Pericard and the two defenders. Bald John Green used his brute strength to take the ball on his chest and break away where he coolly lifted the ball into the top corner with his lethal right foot.

Before the day was out, he did it twice more, slotting the ball into an empty net and applying a trademark finish to an incisive Swindon town breakaway. John ran a hand through his puff, he knew deep down that he needed someone to partner Bald John Green, on and off the pitch. Bald John Green just never seemed interested in hanging out with the rest of the team. He was, to his credit, self-distanced from the footballing stereotype of a womanising idiot. He just didn’t bond with Cteve Austin or Voluptuous Pericard. Voluptuous was always trying to set him up with a girlfriend so he could double date with Voluptuous and his wife Alice. It never seemed to work out, John couldn’t really fathom it, and Bald John Green was perhaps the nicest man he’d ever known.

As John followed behind his delighted players into the dressing room, his chief scout and brother Hank appeared from behind him. Pushing up his glasses, he said with a childish smile “We found him. Another John Green.”