D is for dirty tricks and dodgy deeds.

James and Kieran, the two rival football managers in Foul and Fair, go above and beyond (or should that be below and beneath?) in the range of dirty tricks they employ. Although some adults involved in kids’ football get too focused on winning as the be-all and end-all, none of them (I hope) go nearly as far as my fictional creations. Some of the things depicted – dodgy decisions from parents volunteering as referee or linesman, matches called off for tactical reasons, star players ringing for other teams – are probably within a lot of our real-life experience, but I knew that the story needed to go much further. I won’t go into details here – no plotspoilers – but suffice to say that the steady escalation of James and Kieran’s rivalry was a lot of fun to write.

Of course, it’s only going to be satisfying to read if it rings true. I needed the reader to believe in the story, and to keep rooting for James in spite of his misdeeds. Making Kieran such a monster was a big part of that – James gets a degree of leeway because his opposite number is so awful – but the book needed a sense of James not only doing battle with Kieran, but also with his own moral compass. Without giving anything away, the James we meet at the beginning of the book doesn’t make it unchanged to the end of the story. His emotional arc is at least as important as any of the plot points, the dirty tricks or the football matches that underpin his journey.

Does James get his just desserts? Does he still have the reader’s sympathies by the end of the book, or do we want him to have to pay for his actions? That’s not my place to say – you’ll have to be the judge of that. At the very least, I hope that readers will understand the combination of emotions and circumstances that pushes him down the road he follows, as well as where it leaves him by the end of the story.