‘And what else does it do?’

‘I’ll show you in a minute. Slip on a pair of the shorts.’

‘Wot, here?’ said Trev.

Somehow, Pepe looked like a small demon by the light of the forge. ‘Ooh, look at Mister Bashful!’ said Pepe. ‘Just pull a pair on over your trousers for now and I’ll tell you what I’ll do, I’ll even turn my back while you’re doing that.’ He looked away, fiddling with the tools beside the anvil. ‘Got ’em on?’ he said, after listening to a few minutes of heavy breathing.

‘Yes, they, er, well, they feel all right.’

‘Okay,’ said Pepe. ‘Could you just wait ’ere one moment.’ He disappeared into the darkness and, after a succession of strange noises, walked back into view, slowly and awkwardly.

‘What’s that you’re wearin’, Pepe?’ said Trev. ‘It looks like a mass of cushions to me.’

‘Oh, just a bit of protection,’ said Pepe. ‘Now if you could just go back a little way, Mister Nutt, and Trev, if you could oblige me by putting your hands on your head, it just helps to get the measurements right.’ He turned his back on them. ‘Okay, Trevor, are your hands on your head?’

‘Yeah, yeah.’

At which point, Pepe spun round and hit him full force in the groin with a twenty-four-pound sledgehammer…

Surprisingly, the only effect was to send Pepe crashing into the opposite wall. ‘Perfect!’ said his voice, muffled by the padding.

Morning came, but it seemed to Glenda that there was no night and no day, no work and no play, there was just football, ahead of them all, drawing them together. In the Great Hall the team had a table all to themselves. Servants and wizards side by side, filling up as only Unseen University could.

Football owned the day. Nothing was happening that wasn’t about football. There were certainly no lectures. Of course, there never were, but at least today they weren’t being attended because of the excitement about the upcoming match rather than not being attended because no one wanted to go to them. And after a while, Glenda became aware of the sound which was coming from the city itself.

There were crowds outside the university; there were crowds, even now, queuing to get into the Hippo. The sound of a hundred thousand people at one purpose rose like the buzz of a distant swarm.

Glenda went back to the sanctuary of the Night Kitchen and tried to pass some time by doing some baking, but the dough fell from her fingers.

‘Are you upset?’ said Juliet.

‘I hope we’re going to win,’ said Glenda.

‘Well, of course we’re going to win,’ said Juliet.

‘That’s all very well up until the time we lose,’ said Glenda. ‘Yes, who’s that?’

The door was pushed open and Pepe stepped in, looking smarter than usual. ‘Hello, ladies,’ he said. ‘Got a little message for you. How was you expecting to watch the match?’

‘Just so long as we can get close,’ said Glenda.

‘Tell you what, then,’ said Pepe. ‘Madame has got the best seats in the stadium. Nothing underhand, just open and above-board bribery. Shatta has got to be seen out and about, you see? Got to keep micromail in the public eye.’

‘I’d love to!’ Juliet shouted. And even Glenda found that her automatic, unthinking cynicism was letting her down.

‘There will be sherry,’ said Pepe.

‘Will there be anyone famous there?’ said Juliet.

Pepe walked over and prodded her gently in the chest and said, ‘Yes. You, miss. Everyone wants to see Jewels.’

It seemed as if the clocks turned backwards. All Watch leave had been suspended, but it was hard to see what crime there could be in streets where nobody could move. A flood of humanity, well, mostly humanity, poured towards the stadium, bounced off it and overflowed and backfilled more and more of the city. The game was in the Hippo, the crowd stretched back to Sator Square and eventually the pressure of so many eyeballs on the hands of so many clocks moved time forwards.

Only the team, and Trev, remained in the Great Hall, everyone else having left much earlier in a fruitless attempt at securing a seat. They milled around aimlessly prodding the ball to one another until Ponder, Nutt and the Archchancellor turned up.

‘Well, big day, lads!’ said Ridcully. ‘Looks like there’s going to be a nice day for it as well. They’re all over there waiting for us to give them a show. I want you to approach this in the best traditions of Unseen University sportsmanship, which is to cheat whenever you are unobserved, though I fear that the chance of anyone being unobserved today is remote. But in any case, I want you all to give it one hundred and ten per cent.’

‘Excuse me, Archchancellor,’ said Ponder Stibbons. ‘I understand the sense of what you are saying, but there is only one hundred per cent.’

‘Well, they could give it one hundred and ten per cent if they tried harder,’ said Ridcully.

‘Well, yes and no, sir. But, in fact, that would mean that you had just made the one hundred per cent bigger while it would still be one hundred per cent. Besides, there is only so fast a man can run, only so high a man can jump. I just wanted to make the point.’

‘Good point, well made,’ said Ridcully, dismissing it instantly. He looked around at the faces. ‘Ah, Mister Likely, I suppose there is nothing I can do that would get you on to the team? Dave Likely’s boy playing for Unseen Academicals would be a bit of a feather in our cap. And I see my colleague Professor Rincewind has humorously already put a white one in his.’

‘Well, sir, you know how I’m fixed,’ Trev mumbled.

‘Your old mum,’ said Ridcully, nodding understandingly.

‘I promised her,’ said Trev. ‘I know she’s passed away, but I’m certain that she still watches over me, sir.’

‘Well, that’s nice and does you credit. Is there anything else that can be said? Let me think. Oh yes, gentlemen–Mrs Whitlow, as is her wont on these occasions, has organized her maids to dress up in appropriate costume and cheer us on from the sidelines.’ His face was a blank mask as he continued. ‘Mrs Whitlow unaccountably takes an enthusiastic and uncharacteristically athletic part in these things. There will be high kicking, I am told, but if you are careful where you let your gaze fall, you should see nothing that will upset you too much.’

‘Excuse me, sir,’ said Rincewind. ‘Is it true that some of the men in Ankh-Morpork United are just a bunch of thugs from the Shove?’

‘That might be a bit harsh,’ Ridcully began.

‘Excuse me, sir,’ said Trev, ‘that is quite true. I would say about half of them are honest cloggers and the rest of them are bastards.’

‘Well, I’m sure we will overcome,’ said Ridcully jovially.

‘I would also like to make a few comments before we leave, sir,’ said Nutt. ‘A few words of advice, perhaps? In these few days I have taught you everything I know, even if I do not know how I know it. As you know, I am an orc and whatever else we were, we were team players. You are playing, therefore, not as individuals, but as a team. I think it was Von Haudenbrau who said—’

‘I don’t think we’ve got very much time to get through the crowds,’ said Ridcully, who had been expecting this. ‘Thank you, Mister Nutt, but I really think we ought to get going.’

Those watching from above would have seen the cramped streets of the city waver as the red caterpillar that was the Unseen Academicals made its way to the ground. There were cheers and there were boos and because this was Ankh-Morpork, usually the cheers and the booing were done alternately by everyone concerned.

By the time Lance-Constable Bluejohn of the Watch and two other trolls had forcibly prised open the gates against the pressure of bodies, the noise was just one great hammer of sound. The troll officers opened a path for them with the forethought and delicacy that has made police crowd control such a byword. It led to a fenced-off and heavily guarded area, in the centre of which was the Archchancellor formerly known as Dean, the entire team of Ankh-Morpork United and His Grace the Duke of Ankh, Commander of the City Watch, Sir Samuel Vimes, with a face like a bad lunch. ‘What the hell are you clowns proposing to do to my city?’ he demanded and looked up at Vetinari in his box in the middle of the stand. He raised his voice. ‘I’ve been grafting like mad this last month on getting the KV Accord sorted out and it turns out that just when the dwarfs and the trolls are shaking hands and being jolly good pals, you lot are starting another KV of your very own.’