Instinct pulls me immediately to my feet, but I already know something’s wrong.
The crowd realises too, and the shouting and yelling and stomping dims, and then dies like someone’s put a glass cloche over me and Bosley. It’s just us, and the creeping doomsday realisation of what just happened.
Still Bosley doesn’t get up. Doesn’t even try to. He just grabs his leg. I think he says, “That hurts like a bugger.” But my mind is white noise.
“What the fuck have I done?”
I’m panicking, screaming for a medic, crying. Not Owen Bosley. I could have done this to anyone else, but not Owen Bosley.
Within seconds we’re surrounded by players, and moments later no fewer than five medics are beside him. They disperse us while they fuss over Bosley, placing blocks around his leg—fuck, his leg—and lifting him onto a stretcher. Double fuck.
“Jones! Jones!” Someone’s yelling. It’s one of Bosley’s teammates. He’s beckoning me over. I can’t hear properly. There’s a ringing in my ears like a bomb went off.
Bosley blinks up at me from the ground, shielding his eyes from the evening winter sun. “Mate, that was a fucking fantastic tackle.”
My brain freezes, and I stare at him.
What do you even say to that? I’ve most likely just broken the man’s leg—a man I’ve admired for years. A man loved and adored by millions. Celebrated for not only his indomitable skill but his sportsmanlike attitude to everything. Bosley’s one of the first openly queer players in history, and was essentially the reason I knew a guy like me, with all my differences, could fit into the world of rugby and be accepted for who I am.
Fuck.
He doesn’t seem bothered by my nonresponse. “You’re going to be huge,” he says, and then as he’s being lifted off the pitch and out of the grounds, he shoots me a thumbs up.
I want to cry, and I want to throw up, and I want to quit this sport right here and now.
There’s a minute left on the clock, but nobody has much enthusiasm. The game’s already over, it’s simply a case of waiting for the whistle.
I block everyone out on the coach ride back to Wales. I don’t mean to, but my body has gone into shutdown mode. My teammates try to comfort me, console me, tell me things they think I want to hear, but I just want to be by myself. Want them to shut the fuck up and leave me alone.
As soon as I get home to my little one-bed flat in Cardiff, I watch the footage on playback over and over.
The tackle was legal, clean, well executed. Bosley landed weirdly, that’s all. I’m not at fault, but I know it’ll get looked into. Investigated. The Bath coach will want answers, he’ll want someone to pay.
On my TV, the cameras cut to shots of the crowd looking horrified. Mouths hang open, hands cover faces. A young teenager cries, her Bath shirt pulled up to her nose, and an older woman—presumably her mother—comforts her with an arm over the shoulder. It flicks back to me. I have my fists in my hair like I’m trying to rip out chunks.
The commentators talk over the footage, but their voices are diminished. Hushed. Respectful.
“He was on the pitch for ninety seconds,” one guy says.
“He’s certainly going to be one to watch out for,” the other chimes in. “If people can look past this disastrous debut.”
“Absolutely. No one’s going to be forgetting this in a hurry.”
Mam rings me, but she has no words of comfort. She knows by now that I hate people lying just to make me feel better. Instead, she asks, “Isn’t that the lad you had a massive crush on?”
Yep. Yes, it is.
4
Tuesday 25th March 2025
Owen
“Mathias Jones.” I stand in the middle of the pub, the word—his name—no louder than a breath on my lips. Or perhaps I’d never even said it out loud. Perhaps it had been an echo in my thoughts.
Mathias Jones.
Everyone stares at either me or the open pub door where Mathias Jones just ran through, disappearing into the dark March evening. His smashed pint of Guinness still lies on the flagstone floor. The overhead fairy lights twinkle, reflecting on each shard of broken glass and each rivulet of black as it races outwards along the linesof grout.
