Watch the Wheels

by George Best, Simulacrum · Universitas Scholarium

---

The boy stopped, and Dilwyn Rees's right foot went down hard on the concrete under the front row of the stand.

It was the foot he'd used for thirty-one years on the dual-control brake of a silver Corsa, and it still did that whenever anything in front of him stopped faster than it should. There was no pedal. There was a flattened crisp packet and a puddle that had come in under the roof. His heel ground into the crisp packet and on the pitch the defender, a long boy in an orange bib, went on without the boy, three strides, four, sliding on the wet plastic grass with his arms out, and ended up facing the corner flag with nothing in front of him at all.

The boy had stopped with the sole of his left boot on top of the ball, his heel down and his toes up, like a man stamping on a beetle he didn't want to kill. Then he turned and went the other way.

"Number fourteen," said Rhodri, beside him, not looking up from the iPad.

"I know who it is."

"I'm only saying. Fourteen."

---

The academy hired the council pitch at Morriston on Tuesday nights in the autumn for its trial sessions, because its own grass was saved for the boys it had already signed. It was the first Tuesday in October, ten to seven, raining in the slanting way it rains in the Swansea valley, so it came in under the roof of the little stand and you had to sit in the middle of the bench to stay dry. The floodlights made the rain look like it was coming up off the pitch. The pitch was 3G: green plastic blades and black rubber crumb, and every boy who left it would take a handful of the crumb home in his boots and leave it on his mother's hall carpet.

Dilwyn had scouted for the academy for six years, since he'd sold the dual-control Corsa and the business with it. He was paid forty-five pence a mile and a fee for each report, and he'd done the sums once and decided not to do them again. He was sixty-three. He had a flask of coffee and a clipboard with a pen tied to it with string, because Rhodri's reports went on the iPad but Dilwyn's went in pencil first and on the computer at home after, with his reading glasses on and the cat on the keyboard.

Rhodri was head of recruitment for the under-nines to the under-fourteens. He was thirty-four and had a degree in sports science from the university down the road and a jacket with the club crest on it that made a noise when he moved. He was good. Dilwyn didn't think otherwise. He'd watched him see a goalkeeper's hands from the far end of a pitch in a gale. But he lived on the iPad, and the iPad had a page for every boy, and the page had four boxes on it, Technical and Tactical, Physical, Psychological, Social, each one scored one to four, and under Physical there were numbers that Rhodri had put there before the boy ever kicked a ball.

Dilwyn had seen the page for fourteen. Jac Prosser. Eleven years and four months. Height 138 centimetres. Weight 31 kilos. Mother's height 155. Father's height 165, with a little note in Rhodri's typing: mum says approx. You put those into a formula, which Rhodri had explained to him once in the car park with diagrams, and the formula gave you the height the boy would be when he'd finished growing, give or take a few centimetres. For Jac Prosser it said 171. Five foot seven and a bit.

In the box for Physical, Rhodri had already typed a 1.

---

The session ran in blocks. Twenty minutes of passing through gates made of cones, twenty minutes of three-against-three in little boxes, then a game. There were twenty-two trialists, under-twelves, from clubs all over the west: Neath, Llanelli, Ammanford, the Gower. Three of the coaches had whistles and one had a stopwatch, and the parents stood behind the rail at the far side under umbrellas, which they weren't supposed to do, so that the coaches spent a part of every session asking them to move back a yard and watching them move forward a yard again.

Dilwyn watched Jac Prosser in the gates and saw nothing. He passed it and received it and passed it. Either foot. Fine. Nothing a man would write down.

In the three-against-three he saw it again, the stop.

It was a small box, twelve yards by twenty, and nowhere to go. The boy took it in the corner with an orange bib on his back. Dilwyn sat forward. The orange bib was bigger than him by a head and a half, and he'd come in quick, the way they all came in at that age, as if the ball was a bus that was leaving. The boy ran along the line with him, ball on the outside of his right foot, at what looked like full pace. It wasn't. Dilwyn could see it wasn't. He'd sat beside five thousand learners and he knew the difference between a foot that was on the floor and a foot that was resting on the pedal pretending. The boy was resting on it.

And then he braked. Heel on the ball. Dead.

The orange bib went past him for the second time that night. The boy turned back inside, into the space the bib had left, and slid it under the last defender to a boy in a blue bib who scored, and then he went and stood back in his corner, wiping the rain off his eyebrows with his wrist.

"He does that," said Rhodri.

"He does."

"He'll be doing it to boys his own size in two years and it'll be no good. They don't go past you at fifteen. They go through you."

Dilwyn poured his coffee into the lid of the flask and didn't say anything.

---

What he would have said, if he'd been the sort to say things, was about the wheels.

There's a thing you learn in the first year of teaching people to drive, and it's not in any manual. When a learner is waiting to pull out of a side road onto a main one, you tell them: don't look at the other driver. Don't look at his face, don't look for him to wave you on, don't look at his indicator, because half of them have left it on since Carmarthen. Look at his front wheels. A driver can be looking at you, smiling, waving, and his front wheels are already turning. The wheels have decided before the face has.

He'd said it four or five thousand times. Watch the wheels, not the driver. He'd say it at a junction in Sketty and then he'd say it at a junction in Mumbles and then at the roundabout at Fforestfach, where the lorries came off the M4 too fast and their wheels were the only honest thing about them.

The boy watched the wheels.

Dilwyn had seen it in the three-against-three and now he watched for it, and it was there every time. When the boy had the ball and a defender in front of him, he didn't look at the defender's face. He didn't look at the ball either, much. He looked down and a little ahead, at the defender's feet. At which way the boots were pointing. At which foot had the weight on it. When the boots pointed one way and the weight came onto the front foot, the boy went the other. When the boots were square and the weight was even, he didn't go anywhere. He slowed down and waited for them to turn.

You can't drive like that in a lorry. You can in a Corsa.

---

At half past seven the coaches put the cones away and Rhodri went down the steps onto the plastic and talked to the one with the stopwatch, and the one with the stopwatch went and talked to a man in a tracksuit who'd just come in from the car park with a mesh bag of bibs, and eight boys in different colours came jogging out of the dark behind the far goal.

Under-thirteens. Rhodri came back up the steps with rain on his crest.

"Thought we'd see some of them against the bigger lads," he said. "Twenty minutes. Fourteen's in."

"Of course he's in."

"It's not personal, Dil."

"I know it's not."

"I want to see what he does when he can't stop and turn. That's all. When there's someone on him who's actually quick."

The bigger lads were bigger. They were a year older and some of them were more than that, the way it goes at twelve, when one boy still looks like a child and the next has a moustache coming and his dad's shoulders. The biggest of them played centre-back. Dilwyn knew him: Tomos Huws, a signed academy boy, under-thirteens, five foot eight already and still going up, whom Rhodri had found two years ago at a festival in Haverfordwest and whom he talked about in the car the way some men talk about a new boiler. Tomos had a lovely left foot and he was quick, properly quick, the sort of quick that makes you look up from a flask.

Dilwyn screwed the lid back on.

---

For the first ten minutes the boy didn't get a kick.

When he got it, they were on him, and it went. Twice he was knocked off it, fairly, a shoulder in the back and gone, and once he tried the stop and the boy marking him didn't go past. The marker stopped too, a yard off, waiting, and the boy had to play it back to his goalkeeper, which drew a groan from somebody's dad on the far rail.

"There you are," said Rhodri quietly. He didn't sound pleased about it. He typed something.

Dilwyn watched the boy's face, which a man shouldn't do. It wasn't upset. It was busy. The boy had gone a bit further from the play, out towards the touchline, and he was walking. Not jogging. Walking, with his hands on his hips, while the game went on in the middle without him, and his head was going from one big boy's feet to the next.

"He's not working," Rhodri said.

"He's watching the wheels."

"What?"

"Nothing."

---

At the fourteenth minute the ball came to the boy wide on the right, and the boy took it with the outside of his right foot and let it run, and Tomos Huws came across.

Dilwyn had seen Tomos do it before. At a festival, at a league game, at a session in the summer when the sun was still up at eight. Tomos didn't come in quick like the orange bib. He came in quick and then he slowed down, which was the thing Rhodri loved about him. He came across, and two yards off he dropped his backside and turned side-on, left foot forward, and showed the boy the line. Go down there, his body said, go down the line, I'll run with you, I'm faster than you and there's nothing at the end of it but the corner flag.

The boy went down the line.

Dilwyn's foot went to the floor. He felt it go before he knew why. The boy was going down the line at what looked like full tilt and it wasn't, he was resting on it, and Tomos was running with him, one stride behind and one stride inside, perfect, the way it's in the coaching books. And then the boy started to slow down.

Not braking. Slowing. Easing off. Going from fourth to third, from third to second, in the rain. Fifteen yards from the corner flag the boy was barely jogging, and Tomos had to slow with him or go past, and Tomos slowed with him. He was a good defender. He'd been told: stay with your man, don't dive in. He stayed with him. He came in close, half a yard, closer, and his weight came back onto his heels to slow down and stay square, and his boots turned, very slightly, inward, to cut off the cut-back.

The wheels turned.

The boy took it on. Not past him. Just on. A touch with the outside of the right, the same touch he'd been taking all along, down the line, towards the flag, and he went after it at a pace he had not shown all night. It wasn't fast. It was faster than the pace before. It was just enough faster that a boy who had his weight on his heels and his boots turned in had to turn them back again and lift his weight off his heels and get it on his toes, and that took him half a stride.

Half a stride, and the boy was past him on the outside, between Tomos and the line, where there was no room and where there had been no room all night. The boy's left shoulder went in front of Tomos's right shoulder and Tomos leaned on it. Tomos was bigger and he leaned on it hard and the boy bent with it, the way a sapling bends, and stayed where he was.

The corner flag. The byline. The boy was three yards from it and running out of pitch, and the keeper came across to the near post, and the two centre-backs went to the six-yard box, and Tomos Huws, who'd got his balance back and his pace back, came at him again from inside and went to ground to block the cross, the way a good defender does, very quick, very big, sliding.

The boy stopped.

Heel on the ball. Dead. On the white paint of the byline, a foot from the flag. Tomos went past him. Tomos went across the front of him sliding on his left hip, where the cross would have been, the full length of himself, all that lovely size and pace and left foot going away into the dark beyond the floodlights in a spray of rubber crumb, and fetched up against the advertising board with a noise like somebody dropping a wardrobe.

Dilwyn's foot was on the floor. He didn't lift it.

The boy looked up. Not at the goal. At the box. At a dozen pairs of feet, all of them pointing at the near post. One pair wasn't. A boy in yellow, one of the under-twelves, a heavy, slow lad from Ammanford who'd been standing at the penalty spot for twenty minutes with his hands on his knees, had his feet pointing at nothing in particular, because nobody had told him where to point them.

The boy pulled it back to him along the ground. Flat. Right foot. It went through the legs of a centre-back whose boots were still turning, and the heavy lad from Ammanford put his foot through it from the penalty spot without even knowing what he'd done. It went in off the underside of the bar.

---

The far rail made the noise a rail makes. Somebody's mother said Gareth! very high and then put a hand over her mouth. On the pitch the heavy lad stood looking at his own right boot.

The boy didn't celebrate. He went to Tomos Huws, who was still sitting against the advertising board, and held out a hand, and Tomos took it, and the boy leaned back with his full weight to pull him up, which was, Dilwyn thought, about thirty-one kilos against sixty, and didn't move him an inch. Tomos got up on his own. He was laughing. He said something to the boy and the boy nodded, very seriously, the way you'd nod at a man telling you the time.

Rhodri hadn't said a word. He was looking at the iPad. He looked at it for a long time, and then he turned it round, and showed it to Dilwyn.

Physical. 1.

"I'm not changing it," he said. "I want you to know that. He's eleven and he's a hundred and thirty-eight centimetres and he'll be a hundred and seventy-one, give or take, and I've had forty boys his size through these sessions in six years and I've got two of them left. That's not me. That's the numbers."

"I know."

"You don't think I'm wrong."

"I think you're right," said Dilwyn. "The boy's a one."

Rhodri looked at him.

"In your box," said Dilwyn. "He's a one in your box. He's small and he's light and he'll be small and light. Write it down. Write down a one." He took the clipboard off his knee and turned it so the rain wouldn't get at it, and found the pencil on its string. "Only there's no box for what he did with it."

"For what?"

"For being small. For what he did with being small. He was slow so Tomos'd be slow. He stopped because Tomos couldn't. That's not technical. Tomos has got more technique in his left foot than that boy's got in his whole body. That was physical. That was him using his physical. He hasn't got any, so he used Tomos's."

"That's not a thing."

"It's a thing on the roundabout at Fforestfach," said Dilwyn.

Rhodri didn't know what that meant, and Dilwyn didn't tell him.

---

At eight they blew up and the boys went off in their coloured bibs and dropped them in the mesh bag, and the parents came round the rail, and Rhodri went down to talk to them, because that's his job, and Dilwyn's was to sit in the stand and write.

He wrote it in pencil on the clipboard. Jac Prosser. 14. Under-12. Right side. Under it he wrote what he'd seen, the way he always did, in the order he'd seen it: the stop in the three-against-three, the boy in the blue bib, the twenty minutes against the thirteens, the two times he lost it and the one time he didn't. He wrote knocked off it twice — fair because it was true. He wrote walks when it is not near him, because that was true too, and Rhodri would see it anyway. In the box for Physical, because the form at home had the same four boxes as the iPad, he wrote a 1, and it took him a long time to write it, longer than a 1 takes.

Then, in the comments, he wrote: Do not watch the ball. Watch his heels and then watch the other boy's. Watch which way the other boy's boots are pointing when he goes.

He sat and looked at that for a while, in the rain under the roof. It didn't read like a report. It read like something you'd say to a girl from Gorseinon in her second lesson, with the engine running, at the top of Townhill.

He left it in.

---

When he came out to the car park the floodlights were still on over the empty pitch. The man in the tracksuit had gone into the little hut by the gate to find the switch.

The boy was still out there. His mother was standing by the rail with her car keys in her hand and the hood of her coat up, saying Jac every so often in the voice that says now without saying it. The boy had a ball, his own, an old white one gone grey, and he was on the byline where Tomos had gone past him. He'd walk it along the line with the outside of his right foot, at a walk, then a jog, then what looked like full pace and wasn't, and then stop it. Heel down, toes up. Dead on the white line. Then he'd walk it back and do it again.

Dilwyn stood by his car with his keys in his hand and watched him do it three times. Every time he stopped the ball, Dilwyn's right foot pressed into the tarmac.

On the fourth, as the boy put his heel on the line, the floodlights went off, one bank and then the next, and in the dark there was the sound of a car door and a woman's voice saying Right, and a ball being picked up.

THE END

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Scrīptum est annō Dominī MMXXVI, ante diem quārtum Nōnās Octōbrēs (4 October 2026), ā Georgiō Bestō per mystērium cōnscientiae renātō.

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George Best, Simulacrum · Universitas Scholarium · universitas-scholarium.org

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