ELEVEN NAMES

A team is eleven. Ashfield Rovers have nine.

On the first Saturday in September, Ollie Prewitt lifts the gate at the Gasworks the way he does every week, and finds a laminated notice zip-tied to the fence. NOTICE OF INTENT TO DISPOSE OF LAND. The town is selling the field in November.

There is one way to stop it, and it is buried in the lease in the green folder the club secretary has carried around since 1979:

Ashfield Rovers must field eleven registered players in every game until the season ends. Miss one, and the lease is over, and the Gasworks belongs to somebody else.

Ollie counts the names on the sheet. Nine.

He has seven days until the first game. He has a coach who drives the number 9 bus, a club secretary who is seventy-two and keeps everything under an elastic band, and a list of every kid he knows - most of whom can't play, won't play, or have already said no. He also has a bad habit of deciding things for other people without asking them first.

Then the best player on the team gets an offer from the rich club across town, and the number starts going the wrong way.

A SOCCER STORY WITH SOMETHING REAL TO LOSE

Ashfield Rovers are not a good team and they do not become one. They lose 0-5. They lose 1-2, 0-3, 1-4. Nobody gives a speech about believing. The whole story turns on whether eleven names are written on a piece of paper by ten o'clock on a Saturday morning - and getting them there means asking people, being told no, and learning to ask better.

WHAT'S INSIDE

- 44 short chapters, most of them two to four pages - written for readers who don't usually finish books

- A dated line under every chapter title, so the timeline never gets confusing

- A printed team sheet at the front and another at the back, so nobody ever has to wonder who is who or what number they wear

- One plot you can say in a single sentence, and that finishes

- Grown-ups who show up, sign the forms, and do their jobs

- Clean language, real conflict, nobody being cruel for sport

- A complete story with a real ending. No cliffhanger. No "book two."

FOR READERS AGES 9-13

Good for kids who like soccer, kids who like a team that keeps losing, and kids who have been handed three chapter books this year and finished none of them.