Alfie is borrowed, with expressed permission, from KCS. The other Irregulars are mine! And I might as well mention that besides the plot, that's all I own.

I Spy

Watson

I decided to wait until after dinner to bring up the subject of the jerseys. One good thing about the whole confounded affair­­­- Holmes was actually eating for a change.

But after Mrs Hudson had delivered the coffee tray and excused herself to retire for the night, I decided the matter could wait no longer.

"Holmes," I began, "Overton mentioned to me today during practise…" I paused, trying to decide how best to put this to him. I had notice the way his eyes widened upon viewing the bill this morning, and was loathe to suggest him spend more on this ridiculous venture. "He thinks, and I agree, that we need practise shirts as soon as possible."

Holmes didn't say a word, and his face remained its usual impassive mask, so I pressed on. "You know, practise jerseys? So we don't have to continually be washing our game jerseys… by Jove, we haven't ordered those yet, either, have we? The pack needs them for good scrums, and think about it Holmes, we need to start practising plays and proper tackling and rucking and mauling soon, and we can't really do any of that without rugger shirts! Well, we could, but 50 shredded shirts later and I think we'd think it a good investment." I trailed off, uncertain of what else to say, and unable to read Holmes' reaction.

He finally broke the apprehensive atmosphere. "Of course. But who will we get to design them?"

His immediate acceptance of the request caught me completely off guard, and I stared at him incredulously.

"Oh, come now old chap, we can't be having plain, average, mundane jerseys, can we? Even if they're only for practises, we have an image to maintain, have we not?"

Still slightly bewildered, I thought aloud. "I suppose we could have one of the Irregulars do it."

"Splendid idea! I'll tell Wiggins tomorrow. We'll have the orders in by Saturday.

"But Holmes!" I exclaimed, coming fully to my senses, "It'll cost a fortune! Two sets of emblazoned jerseys for the whole team?"

"Of course," he added with the smallest hint of a smirk, "we'll have to run it by our sponsor…"

"Sponsor!" The significance of the presence of His Majesty the King of Bohemia suddenly dawned on me. "Oh." I said rather stupidly. "Ohhhhhhhhh," I added again, equally stupidly, as the humour of the situation hit me.

We had rather a good laugh. I suspect my moment of idiocy was the reason Holmes joined in.

Holmes

The next morning being Thursday, I approached Wiggins immediately before practise to tell him of our proposal.

"Wiggins!"

"Aye, Gov'nor?"

"I have a job for your boys. I need them to design the team jerseys. Logos, colours, everything."

"Blimey gov'! You ain't kiddin' or nuthink?"

"I am most certainly serious… and Wiggins?"

"Yes Mr 'Olmes?"

"Bring round some of you best lads at lunch. I have a job for them."

Practise was mainly the same as the past 3 days. Running, running, passing while running, and more running.

But with half an hour until break, Staunton announced that we would now join with the packs and try something new.

Kicking.

The basic premise of the exercise was simple. Split the team in half, give almost everyone on one side a ball, and have them all kick it to the other side. The other side then caught the balls and kicked them back. This meant that the whole team would not have to chase their balls down the field after each kick, and we could also get some valuable practise catching, in case the other squad was using kickers.

Of course, actually executing the exercise was a different thing.

For starters, Staunton made kicking look easy. It's not. You need very good aim, and it hurts quite a lot if you botch it up. To help us along, Staunton and Overton made it into a sort of friendly contest, with the loosing side having to buy the winning side drinks after practise on Friday. Points would be scored for each ball caught, and at the end of 4 rounds the winner would be declared by our score keeper Alfie, who just happened to be hanging around.

As difficult as kicking it was, catching it was in a league of its own. You can never quite tell where the ball is going, and it's extremely hard to judge when it's coming down. On top of that, a really good kick hurts like Hades when you catch it, and can often times knock the breath out of you.

Needless to say by the end of round three the score sat at a pitiful 6-4 for the other side, made even more pitiful by the fact that two of our points had been scored by Alder, and the other two by me. Baskerville and Wiggins seemed to be having a war of sorts: one would kick it directly at the other, who'd miss, retrieve it, and kick it right back at them. Most of the others weren't faring too well. It wasn't for lack of trying; in fact several really good kickers had emerged, but most just couldn't seem to get the hang of it.

We rallied during round four, and scored a point when Baskerville "won" the war, but we ended with a sound thrashing of 12-5 and broke for lunch.

True to his word, Wiggins had half a dozen boys at the gate less than five minutes later. I had sent Watson on ahead to the pub, for I was not to sure whether he would approve of what I was about to do.

"Mr. 'Olmes, this here's Alfie, Freddie, Jack, Bob, Jimmy, and the tall one there's Grenadier. There's the best o' the best fer what'cho got in mind."

"Thank you, Wiggins. You may go." My dismissal surprised him, and for a minute I thought he would refuse. He thought better of it though, and walked off with Sir Henry, of all people.

"Now boys, what I'm about to ask you must be kept strictly between ourselves. Do you all understand?" Six eager faces looked up at me and nodded. "Good. I want you to-"

I explained their "mission" as quickly and thoroughly as possible under the circumstances, then sent them scampering off towards their goal.

I hoped they would return bearing favourable news.

Omniscient because author sucks at Cockney (she can speak it, she just can't write it.)

The boys were slightly nervous about what they were about to do, but for several different reasons.

Jimmy, because it was his first mission and he didn't want to botch it;

Freddie, because his slightly fastidious sense of sportsmanship couldn't decide whether what they were doing constituted as cheating;

Bobby, because he was the oldest and therefore responsible for any mishaps;

And Jack, Alfie, and Grenadier, because they were about to spy on a rugby team made up of and led by the most dangerous men in the world, and quite frankly would like to leave in one piece.

Jack, Alfie, and Grenadier had the right idea.

Oh the joys of working for Mr 'Olmes.

They found a pretty well concealed spot to watch the practise. It was… something.

To start with, Moriarty was completely and totally unforgiving. A dropped pass in the first warm-up equalled a strike, and three strikes equalled 25 push ups for the whole team. Then they ran laps, ran some passing drills, did more push ups, and started doing tackling drills. The sheer brutality of these men towards their own teammates was shocking. The boys didn't really want to think about how they'd treat the enemy.

Then came the kicking drills. They were vaguely similar to the ones the Baker Street Team was doing, but every time a man missed a catch, he had to run the length of the field and back. Then after more running, more push ups, a few rucking and mauling drills, they split the packs and backs. The packs proceeded to execute several perfect scrums, and proceeded to line outs, which seemed to be the one thing they couldn't do very well. Jack took very careful note of this fact.

It was very evident to Grenadier why the men did so well. The team was run very much like the army: the men feared their coach, and when one man made a mistake, the whole team suffered. After the practise was completed, when the rest of the boys were starting off, he hung back for a minute, watching a few men gather round Milverton. He couldn't quite make out what they were saying, but when Bobby came back to take a look and reminded him that Milverton had dropped six passes in a row, resulting in 50 extra push ups, he was not surprised when the men started raining blows on Milverton.

The rest of the lads yelled at Gren and Bobby to hurry up. They didn't really mind.

I know it ends a bit abruptly, but it was getting far too long…

Next up? The boys reveal their findings to Wiggins and Holmes. Watson finds out about the spying in a somewhat roundabout way. And it's getting down to crunch time.

AND Check out my profile for links to diagrams of the kicking drill, jersey designs, etc. More coming as I think of it.