After playing five games of indoor soccer Sacha scored her first goal, and the team got its first win. The final scoreline was five-nil so Sacha didn't ask for much credit even though her team-mates tried to furnish her with some of it, but all the same she was astonished at the pride she felt - in both herself and the team.

She'd been playing in her usual position on the wing and it was late in the first half. The team they were playing against had no substitutes - they were a team of university students and exams were on - and one of the players came to Sacha's wing to take a break, and because Sacha had been on the bench for most of the game, and because she was geed up by her team-mates and by the echoing, ceaseless noise of the indoor soccer court, when the ball came her way she decided to run with it. She could see how red-faced her opponent was, she sensed without even thinking about it how slowly her opponent was reacting to everything, and instincts she didn't even realise she had took over, and she was surprised to find herself suddenly in the clear, quick as a hiccup.

Reacting to her run her team-mates started shouting to her, and remembering from somewhere a hazy image of a soccer game on television a long time ago, or Craig Foster talking tactics on S.B.S. on a Sunday afternoon when everyone in the house had been too tired to change the channel, she looked up and saw two of her team-mates running towards goal in the centre of the court. She swung her leg back as if swinging an axe, she barely knew what she was doing but she knew where the ball was and she just hit it as hard as she could towards the centre, towards her team-mates; she hit it and hoped.

It didn't really go where she'd intended it to. Instead it took everybody by surprise by screwing towards the near top corner of the goal, spinning sideways in the air. The opposition goal-keeper, moving to cover the cross, was caught on his toes, his weight moving irrevocably forwards while Sacha's wheedling shot/cross wobbled through the air behind him.

Sacha heard the shout from her team-mates before she saw the net bristle. She couldn't fathom it at first: she had some vague sense that the goal would be disallowed because the ball hadn't done what she'd meant it to do. "I was trying to cross it" she said to her grinning team-mates as they came running towards her. "I wasn't trying to score." They didn't care.

They added two more goals during the game and Sacha liked to think, indulgently, that her goal was the pivot-point. On the tram she glowed all the way back home.