This story is about a journeyman footballer and the shocking potential for violence and beauty in his line of work. It leaves you with a crystal-clear sense of what it is like to do a job in front of baying crowds, the ideals and principles at football’s rarest heights, and the magical way Duncan describes manipulating the spaces of a football pitch.

Listen to Wendy Erskine’s amazing reading of it (on The Stinging Fly podcast here).

First published in The Stinging Fly 38:2, Summer 2018, and collected in Midfield Dynamo, Lilliputt Press 2021