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| The passing of one-club man Toby Kroner |
39-year-old Tobias Kroner never once left the Estadio Lucifer since he joined as a 17-year-old youth. It’s been a cloistered lifestyle until today when he steps out the door a free man, because he’s been let go by the Matchstick Men.
Kroner blinks in the bright sunlight, and steps out unseeing into the path of an onrushing sports car. A screech and a thud mark the end of Kroner’s brief life outside in the real world.
“319 games for the club, a record that’ll be hard to beat,” sobs manager Tony Brazil at the memorial service, “and of those games the best were a few seasons ago when Toby drove us on through a big rebuild and kept us in Division 5, often by being, at the same time, our captain, playmaker and deadball specialist.
“But by the time we began rising through the divisions Toby’s star was beginning to wane. His skill was slowly dripping away season-by-season, one bar at a time, then the recent change report saw him drop three skill bars in one go. Kroner was now half the man he used to be, and the second division is no place for old men.
“A ninetieth minute cameo appearance in our last friendly was his final hoorah and then it was time for Toby Kroner to walk out that door. Then the tragedy happened. If only dear God it could have been worthless old me being hit by that car and not dear Tobias.”
Brazil collapses in tears for several minutes. Then the door to the chapel of remembrance is booted open and in the doorway sunlight frames the figure of a brooding man.
“Who do I see about paying for the damage to my car?”
Brazil looks through his tears at the person impudent enough to shatter this moment of grief and blurts, “Jesus Christ it’s Rodger Hedley!”
In some poetic, stranger-than-fiction manner, the driver of the car that laid Kroner low is the new signing for the Matchstick Men, Rodger Hedley.
“Hedley you brute,” laughs Brazil moments later in the Old Swan and Vesta pub, “I brought you to replace two of our retiring players, freekicker Aegerter and midfielder Zakay Juninho, but by the rule of ‘dead mans boots’ you are henceforth the new Tobias Kroner.”
Rodger Hedley laughs last and, as the evening in the pub wears without him paying for any drinks, lives up to the nickname given to him by his old club, ‘Rodger The Dodger’.
By the time the bartender throws them out Tobias Kroner is forgotten, and Rodger Hedley entertains his new chums by vandalizing half the cars they pass on their way home. It's a new era and no mistake.
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