Wilderspool Causeway

Fresh off the red eye from Ho Chi Minh City, Jack Saynor made his first destination Woodley, Berkshire. His changed values system was immediately apparent as one of Evan’s teammates approached us in the car park: ‘So what do your people call you?’ asked Jack.

‘Mark’, replied Mark.
‘Far out, brother. Go in peace, friend’
uttered Jack in benediction. He reached into his pockets and withdrew his rizlas, his roll ups, all the dodgy imported Marlboro’ reds and lights: the self-professed Woodbine Willie of our support offered each player and parent a cigarette before the game as a ‘calming leveller’, an opportunity to see the game from a new vantage point.

“What the hell is he doing, Alex? You’re supposed to be helping me here, mate. Sort it out – now.” Coach Peter was not impressed, but Uncle Jack reassured him: “Chill, my brother. Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round again in another form.”

Having spurned an opportunity for philosophical understanding, Wokingham and Woodley began the game with little to offer by way of footballing purpose. David Pleat says ‘You’ve got to put a message on the ball.’ I think he means that you shouldn’t pass without purpose. Don’t play the ball as if it’s an empty text message to the top of your address book. Do something with a bit of meaning or don’t do it at all. But both teams struggled with this, flailing around with ultimately inconsequential effort and misplaced exertion.

Once Connor, Evan and Mark were on the pitch, the complexion of the game became progressively rosier. Coach Peter had asked for ‘dragbacks, Cruyff turns and Maradonas’ and Evan was able to take him literally: no-one could take the ball off him and he was able to open up space for Mark and Connor to vanquish any lingering hopes of a Woodley uprising; Connor’s twinkle toes are just unplayable, in every game. Mark’s regressive power is such that the rules of the game are frequently misinterpreted (he would have been sent off once, twice – or even thrice a by a professional ref), but overruled by character – he roams and lunges, clips and dives, then scores from outlandish positions: ‘Mark, you reminded me of yourself’ is perhaps the highest praise available from Coach Michael, and fair play to him for delving into the deeper waters of cryptic enquiry.

Woodley, ‘rapidly approaching the floor of the gorge’, as Uncle Jack observed, had little recourse to football, at this stage, and were buoyed only by the character and creativity of their supporters whose focus on Waitrose was unclear in its satirical force – were they focusing on the Wokingham branch or the Woodley branch when they belted out ‘kick down the door/ go straight to aisle 4/ get some wild boar/ and some Louis Latour’? I’m not sure, but does it matter? They knew things weren’t happening on the pitch so they mixed the comic with the existential – as everyone should – finishing with: ‘I don’t know where I am/ and I don’t really care/ I look myself in the eyes and no-one’s there/ I fall upon the earth/ I call upon the air/ and all I get is the same old vacant stare.

So Woodley were united with Uncle Jack in their desire to grapple for existential insight, for the values which potentially collude with all that’s meaningful in the universe, but they did so on the basis of inevitable defeat, a prospect which faces us all at one stage or another.