I turned the phone round on the table so Cooke could read it. He read it twice. Then he looked up at Dion, stood in the middle of the kitchen with his laces undone and the dog sat at his feet waiting for the ball.
"Go on, then," I said to Dion. "You are JJ. You know he goes on the touch. How do you beat him?"
He did not need long.
"You do not go outside." He took the ball back off the dog and put it down again.
"You stop. He stops. You drop the shoulder, like you are going outside." The shoulder.
"He is waiting for the touch now, so he does not move on the shoulder, but his weight goes. You can see it go. And then you do not go outside at all." He cut the ball back inside across his own body with the sole of his trainer, and it ran under the table into Cooke's shoe. Thud.
"Inside. Across him. He has put his weight on the wrong leg and he has to come back off it, and you are gone."
Cooke picked the ball up off his shoe and turned it over in his hand.
