Terence Blacker - The Transfer

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Terence Blacker - The Transfer (MacMillan, 1998)

Cover photograph by Colin Thomas

Blurb
The computer graphic appeared on Stanley's screen. A small figure bouncing a tiny white football on his right foot.
His heart thumping, Stanley slips on the headband and places the electrodes against his scalp.

"It works by force of human will," his mother had said.

The force of Stanley's will is awesome. And he's about to make his wildest, most dangerous dream come true ...

CRISIS CLUB IN MYSTERY TRANSFER.

STRIKER SCORES IN NIGHTCLUB

I WAS DUMPED BY LOVE-RAT LAZLO

SCHOOLBOY FAN MISSING.

Eleven year old Stanley Peterson is forever in Miss Boston's bad books on account of his persistent daydreaming about football, in particular, the plight of his beloved City. With just two must-win games to go, City are facing relegation from the premier league, and the prospect of playing Southend United and Grimsby Town next season is just too appalling to contemplate.

Stanley's parents are estranged. Dad's a wannabe freelance photographer working his way through a succession of girlfriends and dead end jobs, but at least he's a City fan and sometimes takes his son along to games. Mum is a computer scientist, experimenting in cybertelekinisis. If she can only shift an image on screen through the powers of the mind, it will constitute a major breakthrough in the treatment of paralysis victims.

So one evening, Stanley loads his favourite football game, Targetman onto mum's PC, dons her hi-tech headgear (a hairnet with wires), and feeds in the details of his fantasy football hero, 'Lazlo', the greatest striker who never lived. If only City had somebody like him up front!

Very soon they will have ...

to be continued ...

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"AFFIX THE STUD. WHEN IT MAKES CONTACT, YOU ARE LAZLO"

If any of you remember the Fred Baker & John Gillatt strip Billy's Boots from Scorcher/ Roy Of The Rovers, think Stanley's Stud and you'll have a fair idea of how The Transfer one is shaping up. (Matt, in the unlikely event of you reading this, look away now as you will find what follows especially painful!)

Stanley accompanies his best friends and fellow City nuts Callan and Angie (she's big on stats) to the penultimate home game of the season, versus a top-five Spurs side chasing a Champions League place. Stan's pals have noticed he's been acting stranger than usual at school, and now the teams are on the pitch he wants to sneak off to the toilet? They're not even losing yet. "Pre-match nerves," he explains, and scarpers.

A kindly passer-by hears such a commotion from the bog that his initial fear is some poor sod has suffered a stroke. A rap on the cubicle door and - out steps Lazlo, City's mystery signing from nowhere, to stage a one-man pitch invasion. Desperate City manager Steve Malcolm is so impressed with his warm up that he rewards him with a place on the bench at the expense of aging fans's favourite Martin Sturgess. His bewildered team mates already despise him, the coach calls him "Geronimo" and points out that he's a short-arse, but Lazlo doesn't care. Wait until he gets on the pitch!

A nail-biting first half ends goalless. Ten minutes into the second, the boss hooks mis-firing centre forward George Dodd, who throws a strop at being replaced by some greasy johnny foreigner nobody has heard of. At first it seems Malcolm has boobed. Lazlo is even more rubbish than that cart-horse Dodd. Even the home fans are mocking and booing his every touch, until suddenly Lazlo discovers his shooting boots. He sets up the first goal, scores a second, and is cynically scythed down to win a last minute penalty which he nonchalantly converts. City three, ten-man Spurs nil! The Loft are going crazy! "Lazlo! Lazlo! Lazlo!". Time for a speedy getaway, and best get that swollen ankle seen to before next weeks crunch battle - Liverpool at home!

Page 75, and a hint as to where the nightmare horror is gonna come from as Mum intimates "There's a theory that powering the computer with your synapses actually weakens you - destroys your brain cells ...."

Football. Bloody Hell!

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"Bloomin' foriegn rubbish. If you want my opinion, we should ban foreign players ... Get your Lazlo down to play Wimbledon and get kicked around in the mud on a wet November afternoon - then we'd see if he was any good." - ex-City hardman 'Degsy'

Stanley faces a stark choice between helping QPR-in-disguise beat the drop or walking away while his brain is relatively undamaged. The last thing he needs right now is to be on the wrong end of a 'shock! horror!' exposé in The Daily St*r, but the disgruntled Martin Sturgess has hired a lookalike to masquerade as the mystery man in a West End Nightclub. "Lazza Scores Again .... The wayward star astonished clubbers and staff, DRINKING from bottles of champagne, KISSING the two girls he was with and ABUSING our photographer." Bad enough that he's got to somehow get himself picked for Saturday's grudge match with champions elect Liverpool, how can he face a strict disciplinarian like Steve Malcolm while his name's being dragged through the mud?

Stanley is fortunate to even make it to the stadium. After pulling his Superman stunt in Degsy's sports emporium, he catches his studs in the pavement and comes down head first. Luckily, a passing City fan, Rafiq, rescues him from the crowd ("Has he been out on the booze again?" "Watch it, he's foreign"), whisks him into his car and away to the ground. An ill-advised questioning of the gaffer's suicidal tactics sees him dropped to the bench.

Liverpool, needing a win to lift the championship trophy, coast to a two goal lead and come half-time they're show-boating. Martin Sturgess has ballooned a sitter over the stand and the City chokers are lurching around like zombies. On the touchline, Steve Malcolm is throwing a mental. The crowd are so insistent for Lazlo that the boss finally relents, accepting that City are good as doomed anyway. "Time for a miracle, Lazza", encourages he subbed Kevin Miller, and the pocket-battleship obliges. Within ten minutes he's single-handedly dragged City level, earned his first ever yellow card for an over-exuberant celebration with his glamorous form teacher, Miss Tysoe, who snogs his face off after the equaliser, and wound-up Brian O'Reilly, the Scouse wizards' combustible hatchet-man who's looking to achieve the tenth sending off of his distinguished career. A goal in injury-time wins it, but for who? Far be it from me to blabbermouth the result but, spookily, it's exactly the same as the last time the two sides met for real at Loftus Road in March - and Liverpool blew a two goal lead in that game, too!).

So, a pitch-invasion by the ecstatic City fans, despair for the Anfield army, and mixed emotions for Lazlo. He's saved city but at a price. At some stage during the chaos, he's lost his magic stud.! He's trapped in the body of his virtual hero!

Lazza may have saved City from the drop, but the gaffer wants rid of his swarthy supersub. City need money, 'Lazza's their most valuable asset, but most of all, there's no way Steve Malcolm is going to be undermined by some hairy pint-sized continental! To celebrate their reprieve, the team head off to West London's swanky RESULT club where Malcolm introduces his prodigy to his agent, Terry Mills, the sleaziest, most ruthless shark in the game. Meanwhile at the bar, blonde stunner Julie Simpson hones in on her next lovely kiss and tell pay-check ...

Rafiq and his trusty mini-cab to the rescue again. Stanley decides there's only one person he can confide in and has Rafiq drop him of at Miss Tysoe's house. While she's preparing the pasta and coke, a news item about missing schoolboy Stanley Peterson, last seen leaving home for City stadium where he was supposed to be meeting his dad. His parents look distraught. When Miss Tysoe returns, she's done her hair and changed into a silk blouse and WAG-short skirt. "Call me Gemma", she smiles, puckering up for a repeat of yesterday's steamy embrace ...

Maybe not Miss Tysoe then, which leaves - his parents. But how can a stocky Eastern European centre forward convince them that he's really their eleven year old son? Even if they believe him, will his mum's demonstrably rubbish powers of cybertelekinisis be up to reversing the process?