Little Croker Read Online Free Page B

curry man leapt off the sofa and celebrated as if they had travelled back in time and were amongst all the fans in Hill 16.
    Danny fell asleep that night thinking about the legends of GAA history and dreaming that by Friday evening he could be taking his first steps to becoming a Dublin legend himself.

Chapter 5
A Dirty Player
    A s if nothing had happened on Saturday, Sean Dempsey and his trouble-making dad, Tommy, turned up for training on Tuesday evening.
    Mick wasn’t really in the humour for more conflict so he just let Sean participate in training and he kept his distance from Tommy, who was unusually quiet, watching the session from behind one of the goal posts.
    Mick ran the boys through their normal routine, starting them with a few warm-up exercises with Jimmy and then a couple of laps around the full length of the pitch whilehe set out the cones at the edge of the playing fields to benefit from the street lamps.
    ‘Right! Bring them in, Jimmy,’ yelled Mick, and everyone gathered around their coach, slightly red-faced and gasping for breath.
    ‘Well done, lads. Thanks, Jimmy,’ said Mick.
    Danny and his team-mates did fifteen minutes of different exercise techniques, from sprint racing in and out of the cones to dribbling the ball to passing the ball from one end to the other and then sprinting to the other end.
    Training for Littlestown Crokes was hard, but it kept Danny and the other players super-fit and that had a lot to do with why they were top of their league.
    Mick always liked to finish training with a short friendly match between the players just to keep the morale up. All training and no play doesn’t make good team players, thought Mick.
    Jimmy and a few of the players set up a small pitch with the cones. Mick split the players into two sides; he would be referee.
    Training matches were always a mixture of competitiveness and fun, and that’s exactly how this game was going until one stupid tackle changed the whole enjoyable atmosphere completely.
    There were only a couple of minutes of training left when Danny pulled off the perfect pick-up and went on a galloping solo down the line. He threw a dummy and swerved around Paddy Timmons, then he hand-passed to Splinter who repeated the skill over Little Johnner Watson’s head, sending the ball back into the hands of Danny.
    Danny now had the goal within range. He released the ball from his right hand into the path of his dynamic right foot.
    Then, BANG! Just as Danny was about to strike, Dempsey, who had been following his every move, took his legs from under him.
    This was a foul that Dirty Dempsey had been warned about many a time, but this time he was in big trouble. This was the last straw – in Mick Wilde’s book taking out a team mate in training was scraping the bottom of the barrel.
    Danny rolled around the ground in agonising pain, while Mick blew hard on his whistle until he had no more breath left in him to push out his anger at Dempsey.
    Dempsey stepped back while Jimmy held Danny and Mick examined his right leg.
    ‘Is it broken, Mick?’ asked Jimmy with his head slightly turned away as he was quite squeamish.
    ‘I don’t think so,’ answered Mick.
    Danny had already calmed down and that was a good sign.
    ‘Can you stand, son?’ asked Mick.
    ‘I think so, Dad,’ replied Danny, but it was obvious he was still in a lot of discomfort. 
    Everybody was relieved to see Danny back on his feet, and none more so than the captain himself – he had to be fit for the trial on Friday!
    ‘Right! We’ll leave it at that, lads!’ announced Mick. ‘Damien, could you help Danny home? I’ve business to take care of. I’ll follow on.’
    Sean Dempsey was walking over to his dad when Mick caught up with him.
    ‘Sean!’ called Mick.
    Dempsey hesitantly turned around and his dad, Tommy, followed him over to Mick.
    ‘That was out of order,’ said Mick.
    Tommy Dempsey was about to say something, no doubt in his son’s defence, but Mick