Team Hapilopper headquarters, Hapilopper City
A day after returning from World Cup 89 Qualifying Match 7: Hapilopper 3-2 Yasquia
Nathan Ellis pulled up a chair in Dom Probst’s office, next to head coach Thom Perkins. Probst, the head of the organization now calling itself Team Hapilopper, had a spacious office overlooking the team’s practice pitch. On one side, was a trophy shelf containing but one piece of hardware – that big trophy from the 70th Baptism of Fire, when the Hapilopper National Football Team, as it was known then, went undefeated and ran roughshod over their opponents. The concept of winning another tournament, for the time being, seemed like a pipe dream, at least, for now.
Usually, when Nathan was in Dom’s office, it was for reasons entirely different from this. Usually, when he was in here, it was to get ripped a new one after a particularly harsh tackle, or a bad cheap shot, and it would be accompanied by those constant threats to “clean up your act or you’re done.” But the thing with Nathan, though, was that while he did play dirty, more often than not it helped motivate the team, and everyone knew that Nathan had represented much of the competitive spirit that Hapilopper needed.
In other words, Nathan was the heart and soul of Hapiloppian football. Players did so much worse, and a look at his personal life would indicate that he wasn’t that controversial off the pitch, but when he got on it, he was willing to do whatever it took to get the job done.
With that in mind, he was practically untouchable.
“Nathan, explain something to me,” Dom said, sitting back in his huge executive chair. “You’ve made some money over the last few years. I get the feeling you could probably retire comfortably to a houseboat on Lake Eclipse, or some nice condo out on Kingsland Beach. All of your old teammates are gone. But yet, I see you out here, you’re as fit as a fiddle and you’re outperforming kids – and yeah, I said it, kids – that are, what, 10 years younger than you? How do you do it?”
“Because I want to,” Nathan replied. “I’m here as long as y’all want me. Not like I have much else going for me anyway. I don’t have a family – Ernie’s got twins on the way, Cooter got married a couple of months ago, Bobby, Stan, John, I think they’re winding down, they’ve all got something going for them.”
Nathan sat there for a bit and stared out at the practice pitch out the window behind Dom.
“You know something, Dom, this is really all I’ve got,” Nathan said. “Football kept me out of jail. Football gave me life. If it wasn’t for football, I’d either be in jail or dead. I want to try party planning, but the last time I tried it, Drake Stevenson wanted to kill me, I had completely ruined his party by mistake. But I don’t have a family, I don’t have kids, I hardly have friends, for fuck’s sakes. This is what I need to keep me going.”
“You know, Ellis, I have concerns about this team’s abilities,” Dom said. “I imagine you do too. I imagine that us being last place kept you up at night. How do you keep going with that in mind?”
“They’re young, they’re raw, and they’ve got potential,” Nate explained. “I saw what they could do. They’re getting the hang of it, and they’re getting the hang of it fast. They’re getting accustomed to our tactics and how to make the most of it.”
“But it took them almost a quarter of the campaign,” Dom snapped. “We were in last fucking place, Ellis, and that’s not bothering you?”
“It DOES bother me, sir,” Nathan shot back. “If it didn’t bother me, I wouldn’t have gone out and knocked that poor Kytler guy into next week. If it didn’t bother me, I wouldn’t have sought Thom out at Center Street and tried to work things out. I’m trying to do things to right this ship just like the rest of you. The difference between you and me, though, is that it looks like I’ve got a hell of a lot more confidence in those kids than you do.”
“Nathan…” Dom started. Nathan had disarmed him with that little snipe about confidence.
“Let me finish,” Nathan continued. “I know good footballers when I see them, and those kids there are good footballers. They need to refine their skills, and they need to refine their ability in the Hapiloppian system. These kids will be around for quite a while, if they play as long as I do. I’m not sure what the rest of my career looks like. I’ll play as long as I’m able, and as long as you’ll let me. But I want to be around to see us qualifying for a World Cup. I haven’t seen that yet.”
Dom nodded his head, but started again.
“Can I explain something about my concerns?” Dom asked. “Because I feel like I touched a nerve.”
“Sure,” Nathan replied. “I ain’t got nothing but time.”
“When we field a national team of football players, these players are, theoretically, the best football players that we have,” Dom explained. “We are a nation that, in the past, has been near the top of the table, from the moment we started in international football. We play the best and we beat the best. So why in the hell now, are we barely beating something called a Democratic Kingdom of South India?”
Nathan sat there and thought about it, taking in Dom’s concerns.
“Nathan, you were part of a team that beat Brenecia – whipped their asses, no less, three nil!” Dom explained. “We kicked Equestria’s ass and for half of that World Cup campaign, we were the lineal world champions of international football! Why the hell are we near the bottom of the pile? I look at those results and I wonder if we made a mistake signing up for this, and I wonder if somewhere out there, there’s a better team we could field.”
Nathan shook his head and calmly sat forward in his chair to supply his response.
“See, that’s the problem right there, Dom,” Nathan explained, putting his left hand over his mouth and chin to contemplate a measured response. “Our biggest failing is exactly that – we’ve been so wishy-washy in signing up for these events. That screws with the minds of the kids out there. Are they good enough? Not good enough to play out there? Oh, we’re still reeling from that shit that happened in World Cup 85, I hear people say.”
“That did us a lot of damage,” Dom quietly and sadly said.
“And it’s going to keep doing us damage if we keep thinking about it,” Nathan said without missing a beat. “All the time I keep hearing about what would have happened if that didn’t happen. Hell, some idiots on the radio were talking about that today as I had to go through that stupid drive-thru for lunch. I’m through dwelling on it. It happened. It sucked. But it’s going to keep hurting us if we keep thinking about it. Let’s think about now.”
“OK, let’s do,” Dom snapped. “Let’s forget about what put us on this road in the first place. Let’s forget about how we could have and should have qualified that year. And let’s…”
“And let’s focus on the now,” Nathan said. “Let’s focus on those kids. Rather than think about the past and bitch about how those kids might not be the best we’ve got, let’s make those kids the best we’ve got. All of those kids out there are coachable. They’ve got great abilities. Don’t give up on them. We give up too easily. We keep giving up because we think it’s still the Baptism of Fire, and we’re going to get our asses kicked time and again. Those kids don’t want to give up. You give them a chance, and they’ll give you a World Cup.”
“I hope you’re right,” Dom said. “You better be right.”
“I think I will be,” Nathan said with a bit of his cocky bravado that got him in trouble half the time. “There’s an old saying, and I think it applies here.”
“What’s that?” Dom asked.
“The kids are alright.”
