Nightmare On Main Street (part 1)
It was midnight. Every window in the long façade of Mastiff Towers was dark. Except one, just above the entrance marked “Delivery”, where a tall, thin man was standing in the glare of a ghastly yellow light. He had been there some time.
Nils Norvik was the manager of Hound Dog Rovers. He had been in the job five years. Drawing on all the experience of a successful career in club management, he had taken the Rovers to the brink of greatness. They had finished runners-up in the Crufts League last year, and reached the final stages of the Winalot Trophy. This was meant to be the season of triumph – but it had all gone wrong. Norvik needed to work out why.
It was as if the Rovers had forgotten how to play as a team. All of them were doing their own thing on the field. His players had departed from the well-analysed moves they had practised in training and were taking the game into cul-de-sacs of their own. If they played a tactical game, they always lost possession at the end of it. If they tried a positional approach, zone-marking the opposition front-runners, they found could not cope with the opposition players’ neat passing manoeuvres. And all of them were running in different directions on the field: some went straight ahead, others went on a diagonal run, while the rest just ran from side to side and got nowhere.
The next match was the local derby against their arch rivals the Running Dogs. It was a crucial relegation decider. The losers were likely to be relegated to the Kennels Conference and could expect a significant loss of revenue next season. Norvik knew what that meant: no buying power to strengthen his squad in the next spending round.
The Running Dogs had also had a dreadful season, losing game after game and conceding more points than anyone else. Some had attributed this to the extravagant behaviour of their new manager – George “Mad” Barking. A colourful figure with his trademark fedora, and his constant companion, the dog Drooper (a lugubrious hound if ever there was one). Barking had carried out a takeover of the club in somewhat mysterious circumstances. With his Slash for Cash strategy, he had replaced most of the playing staff with a small number of consultants. Performance had improved – they were conceding fewer points than before – but the team had not achieved any actual results as yet. Also, the club’s wage bill had doubled overnight. Norvik knew that Barking was desperate for more funds.
To make things worse for the Running Dogs, their stadium was undergoing a long-term reconstruction. Barking was constantly moving the goal-posts and his team didn’t know whether they were coming or going. The club’s Chief Executive, one of the main supporters of the restructuring, had just quit to take up a new post as coach to the Icelandic national team.
But what about Hound Dog Rovers? Norvik reflected once more on their inability to play a co-ordinated game. Suddenly, an idea struck him with the force of a thunderbolt. This had to be the answer…