The Bravest Kid I've Ever Known and Other Naughty Stories for Good Boys and Girls Read Online Free

Burke spewed in the coach’s car. That was the last pie night we had that year.
    Our worst game ever was against the top team, Nyora. By half-time, they’d kicked twenty-seven goals to our zero. We got the ball up to our forward line once, but instead of picking it up, Billy Burke tripped on it and bumped his head on the goal post.
    ‘What a pack of losers!’ yelled the Nyora guys. ‘What a bunch of dorks!’
    I hated Nyora. Not just because they were good. They were tough, too. One day, one of their really big players, Monkey Roberts, smashed my best mate Owen. Somehow I’ll get him back for Owen.
    At half-time of the Nyora game, our coach was so angry that he asked if we should just give up and play ring-a-ring-a-rosy instead. Stupid Terry Betts thought he was serious, and said, ‘Yeah. Cool!’
    Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, we were trudging off the ground after losing again by heaps, when my mate Alan said, ‘I’m sick of this.’
    Oh no, I thought, Alan’s not going to leave too, is he?
    ‘No way,’ said Alan, seeing the look on my face. ‘I’d never leave. Not until we have a win. A win against Nyora. And I’ve got an idea.’
    Alan got us all together after the game and said he was angry about losing all the time and that he’d had enough. He was ready to try anything. Even if it meant cheating. Well, not cheating, but maybe just bending the rules a little bit.
    Alan said he didn’t mind training every night of the week if that’s what it would take, but one thing was certain — he was never going to cop a beating like that again.
    ‘My dad says we should be proud to wear this jumper,’ said Alan, ‘and I am! Are you with me?’
    ‘Yeah,’ screamed the other kids.
    Later, in the showers, I said to Alan it was great the way he’d spoken and that maybe he should be captain.
    ‘OK, but just for one week,’ said Alan. ‘I’ve got a few ideas that are a bit naughty. In fact, really naughty.’
    Alan said that after that one week, I should be captain again because I was ‘fair and honest’. Which suddenly sounded a bit wussy, to be truthful.
    So, Alan got us all around to his place after Thursday training because another Nyora game was coming up the very next week. How we could possibly improve enough to beat the top team, though, I had no idea.
    Well, Alan really did have some cool ideas. ‘I’m talking about tricks,’ said Alan. ‘Really naughty tricks. Nyora will hate our guts for it so they’ll bash us. Can you take it? Are you with me?’
    ‘Yeah!’ we all screamed again.

    The week went by in a flash, and suddenly it was Saturday again. In the rooms before the Nyora game, I’ve never seen kids so fired up. If I had one nervous wee, I reckon I had twenty. Kids chattered and shivered and fidgeted and laughed and felt sick. At last it was time to run out onto the ground.
    It was a cold day. Freezing, in fact. And the ground was muddy, which was just what Alan wanted. Alan had asked us to spend the first three quarters trying our guts out to stop Nyora from scoring. And the best way to do that was to keep the ball in the mud.
    Every single one of us did just that. Kids threw themselves at the ball as if their lives depended on it. My dad said he’d never seen such courage. A pack would form and each time the whole team would run in and jump on top. Stacks on the mill.
    It would take the umpire so long to drag us off that unbelievably, by the end of the third quarter, Nyora had scored just two goals. And then it was time for Alan’s really naughty tricks.
    As soon as the ball was bounced for the start of the last quarter, Alan screamed out, ‘Monkey Roberts is such a sook that he still takes his teddy to bed and gets his mum to help him have a pee!’
    Monkey stopped dead. He couldn’t believe his ears.
    ‘And,’ said Alan, ‘the rest of you Nyora wussies are about as tough as a bag of fairy floss.’

    With that, Alan ran. For his life. Straight off the ground and into the club