The Schwing Stetter Plate is perhaps not the most widely known or revered football competition, even in Wokingham, but you have to credit Ashridge Park with some business acumen. Their tournament is sponsored by one of the bigger concreting equipment companies, founded in 1934 by Friedrich Wilhelm Schwing, a mechanic from the Ruhr who innovated with concrete slabs and truck mounted boom pumps. He even devised a tower crane which could be transported without having to be dismantled. Their slogan for the tournament is ‘Achieve Your Concrete Goals!’
Don’t be under any illusion that the sponsors are derived merely from the world of Big Concrete though. Amazon Filters produce Side Stream Filtration Systems and maximise membrane life; their blog suggests they have a role in shaping the future. Kyocera are Ashridge’s shirt sponsors and Pacific Life add a degree of background glamour as the biggest sellers of universal life insurance in the world.
With all this professional expertise to draw upon, why was a tournament designed in which 7-year-olds are asked to play five 10 minute games in 4 hours? Did they think that the players would:
a) Sit nicely and chat between games.
b) Run around whinging, nagging, crying, knocking people’s drinks and bags over, being general menaces and tripping over guy ropes while their parents wisely left the coaches in charge.
c) Collapse in a dehydrated mess
d) Kick the crap out of each other and anyone else they could find.
e) Generate an absolutely intolerable mix of all the above.
Chris Coleman has reassured his Welsh team that they won’t have to suffer from ‘cabin fever’, confessing that ‘if any of the boys want to go out for a coffee for a change of scenery, I haven’t got a problem with that, but we won’t be going out in the evenings. There are times when they know where they need to be.’
Good for you, Chris, but have you ever had to deal with what can only be described as the opposite of Agoraphobia? The boys and girls from Wokingham suffer ‘Agoraexpansionism’, ‘Agoraexpressionism’, ‘Agorarampage’, ‘Agoracomfort’, Gabby Agorabonlahor: anything that means the ability to use space to find the one most irritating and inappropriate activity. Yet on the pitch, when a bit of freedom and riotousness was needed, would anything be left in the tank?
First Circle (Limbo)
Binfield Tornadoes 3 Wokingham & Emmbrook 0
The first game was an unmitigated disaster. We started with our weakest team and our weakest goalkeeper – it was an Excel directive. As the nominal away team, we were also at the wrong end of a sloping pitch. Binfield Tornadoes were well organised, nicely shorn a respectable step or two short of Kim Jong Un, but nothing special. Three goals flew in shortly after kick-off and the tournament was irretrievable, a lost cause.
Second Circle (Gluttony)
Bracknell Cavaliers Saints 1 Wokingham and Emmbrook 0
Bracknell had shorter haircuts and louder parents than Binfield, massed together and well apart from the mixed throng of Wokingham, Binfield, Newbury and Ashridge parents who had succumbed to the herd mentality of Gustave La Bon.
I immediately warmed to the Bracknell parents because of this; they were loud, imposing, unafraid to stand apart but also friendly when you ‘got in amongst them.’
This was generally a more compact performance from Wokingham, albeit one which was undone by a horrid defensive mix-up after the goalkeeper rolled the ball out, leaving Amelia to deal with three attackers on her own.
Evan went on a jinking run down the wing. There were glimpses of light but the game would end in futility after a player, who shall remain nameless, executed a ‘Beckham flick’ and left the pitch in tears, distraught.
Third Circle (Fraud)
AFC Newbury Colts 2 Wokingham and Emmbrook 0
Does Newbury have its own moral microclimate? Is it such a bland, nowhere location that life operates according to a different ethical framework?
It’s hard to think of a less inspirational town, though it’s true that Jonny Joy emanates from there. But he’s a person I associate more with the hinterlands of Surrey or the brownfield sites of North Hampshire: a working lunch at a fried chicken restaurant on the outskirts of Hook. The road to Winchester. A sanctuary named after beloved St. Mary. He’s not defined by Newbury.
The crucial moment in this game was a Newbury free-kick in which they decided to ‘put a man on the goalkeeper’, i.e. to stand directly in front of him or her in order to block their line of vision: a shoddy West Berkshire stratagem.
Fourth Circle (Heresy)
Binfield Rebels 0 Wokingham and Emmbrook 0.
Can’t remember anything about this at all.
Fifth Circle (Treachery)
Ashridge Park 0 Wokingham and Emmbrook 0
Well at least this game provided a little bit of comic relief. The Ashridge Park manager is the strangest coach I have ever seen, bar none, inclusive of Joe Kinnear. Like a mindfulness meditation gone sadly wrong, he yelled ‘BE PRESENT!’ ‘PRESENCE!’ ‘AARON! BE PRESENT!’ ‘ENERGY!’ ‘FIRE!’ ‘ICE!’ ‘EUAN! ICE! FIRE AND ICE! NOW! WHAT DID I TELL YOU, JACK? JACK! JACK!! JACK , LISTEN!! CULTURE! ICE! FIRE AND ICE! FIRE! FIRE! FIRE! ICE! ‘EUAN, GET BACK ON FIRE!’ IT’S NOW! BE HERE! NOW!’
So that was a laugh, but apart from Connor hitting the post in one game, ultimately this was a tournament of five games and no goals, and a lot of misspent energy, albeit with a relatively nice burger and ice cream at the end of it.
Wilderspool Causeway 