Month: October 2016

When a toddler’s in close proximity to a canine, what’s your first thought? And what do you say? I expect it depends whose side you’re on, or if you’re just a disinterested observer. As a parent, I think ‘Go on then, reel off the dog platitudes’ and as an owner, maybe you just launch into them: ‘she’s harmless; just trying to say hello; loves children; bred as a sheepdog so probably just trying to round you up a bit; big softie; too stupid to hurt you; it’s men she doesn’t like.’

But what if something in the nature, breed or behaviour of your dog/human defies this nonsense? You could have a psychotic child or a rottweiler in the midst; there’s a sudden, imminent threat and you won’t be patronised into ignoring it. In this case, I loudly said ‘Don’t worry Iris, it’s only a pitbull off its lead’, hoping the owners might show some genuine understanding and actually catch up with it. To their credit, they reneged from the dog apologist role and offered a limp and disturbing  ‘Say hello nicely, Poppy!’ instead. A further two pitbulls were to surface today – one near Jubilee Avenue and one among the pumpkins outside Waitrose – but for now we were in a pitbull-free enclave for a drizzly game in Woodley.

Wokingham Cougars – drawn largely from the historic houses of central Wokingham – play in a lower league to us having spent most of last season learning the rudiments of the game under the guidance of their  floppy-haired manager. At one point in last season’s match, we agreed to a goal being disallowed after his protestations: ‘Typical Klopp, always making excuses’ exclaimed one of their own fans before we went on to win 5-2, with Evan scoring a penalty.

This time, one of the Cougars’ coaches volunteered to officiate in the absence of an independent ref. ‘I’m not happy about this; we’ll be watching you’ said a concerned parent (me). ‘Well I’m a FIFA registered ref so, er…any brown envelopes?’

We were back in the comforting environment of the Amsterdam Arena. Whereas at previous matches we tended to congregate at the Heineken Music Hall end of the ground, this time we were on the Boris Pasternakstraat side. Half-term seemed to have taken its toll; last season, the Cougar aristocrats brought a large and vociferous crowd (the guys who boasted about dancing on Karl Marx’s grave in Highgate Cemetery and laughed about knocking my coffee over), but this time they were thin on the Amsterdam ground.

Evan, too, seemed a little thrown by time and place. Yesterday, he woke up on Ribena Hill (spelt Rhiwbina) on the outskirts of Cardiff, wondering where on earth he was, and then again between hedges on a lane just north of Newport where we saw an unbelievable sign put up by estate agents who know exactly who they are: ‘Crook and Blight.’

Furthermore, just before the game Evan ventured to some of the farthest reaches of nonsense, to regions where there seem to be only one or two outlying villages of truth. He envies Year 6 their annual trip to ‘Manor Boxing Arena’ which they visit every year because ‘there’s a highly professional medical area there. It’s highly professional. So when they get hit, they can just go there and be healed.’

The first goal Wokingham & Emmbrook scored was one of the best we’ve seen, setting the tone for a commanding and destructive performance. Xanthoulis pinged the ball along the floor to Dance who controlled it brilliantly before driving a perfect ball through to Jack Parry who turned and side-footed it into the corner. There was much laughter and exclamatory stuff from the Boris Pasternakstraat side. When Jack scored with an excellent strike 2 minutes later, eyebrows were raised.

‘What on earth did Jack have for breakfast?’ Elias and I wanted to know, so Andrew went at it both barrels: ‘Breakfast was a nightmare! He wanted rice pops and Cheerios, but the flavours were disturbed so then he asked for rice pops on their own, which he wouldn’t eat. In the end I just gave him toast.’ Andrew and Jack are Wolverhampton Wanderers fans and vegans who won’t buy a Wolves shirt due to their dubious sponsorship, so instead Jack attends training bedecked in the luminescent greens of Forest Green Rovers, a pro-vegan (‘Vegan do it!’), progressive club who are sponsored by Sea Shepherd, another favourite of the Parries as they support the disruption of Japanese whaling, and rightly so.

The landed gentry would not go gently into the Woodley night, though. They prodded a neat volley home from a corner and generally sought to withstand the motley rabble from the railway side of town. However, they were intriguingly stretched by none other than Amelia ‘Rensenbrink’ Mulvaney who clung to the far left wing as the widest middenvelder in Woodley, niggling away at them and executing Cruyff turns in desolate cul-de-sacs of Cougar territory as the clock eroded their chances.

The entrance of her cousin, Connor, would effectively end the match as a contest. As a substitute, he’s like one of those contractors hired in on a short term basis with the most advanced equipment on the market. In Wales, they’re called ‘contract shepherds.’ When your common shepherds can’t find their flocks, or have to rely on archaic equipment when they do, they call in the contractors. They even have online forums which we can peruse. One contract shepherd said their best customer is ‘a lady with 6 ewes, good cake and cold beer. £80 + VAT. Pity I only go there 6 times a year’ to which another big hitter responded with  ‘That probably says something about you’ and left it at that. The conversation went on, but it’s probably best to post a link rather than go into it in too much detail: http://farmingforum.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?6227-Contract-shepherding-man-dogs-and-prattley.

The point is that for us, sea shepherd, pitbull or contract shepherd, Mulvaney’s the man, but he only sealed the win today; every player had one of their best games of the last year or so, a fact reflected by Michael’s inability to hand out an individual man of the match award, but to give it to the whole team or ‘the group’ as Brendan Rodgers would say, no question.

Canada geese: in late afternoon formation over Woosehill, arrowing above and then flattening out at speed towards Emmbrook. What mockery. They have no manager to silently humour, spreadsheet to dictate their rotation or vanishing spray to tell them where to be, yet they offer us a lesson in being available for each other while keeping a sensible distance. True, they also remain largely untroubled by predators on these shores as they tend to commandeer artificially constructed lakes in woodland dotted with ‘millennium trails’, stainless steel sculptures, visitor centres and other follies. Unsurprisingly though, their lives are a little too blessed for the taste of The Daily Mail’s Robert Hardman (June 4th 2008) who suggested that if they were human they would ‘claim every welfare benefit in the book’ because they ‘loaf around at home, laying waste to our public spaces’ while causing a form of colonial resentment among our hardworking native greylags.

Suffering with suspected atrophy of the olfactory bulbs, I withdrew my voice from the sidelines and entered the purgatory of silent observation; the coach had made it quite clear that parental injunctions – regardless of how sane or well meaning they might be – were not required. Complicating this, however, was his need for practical help in the absence of his co-manager. So, yet again, I was to be the dumb timekeeper, patient sleeve unraveller, committed laceman and mute enthusiast.

This time, though, it wasn’t only me who was silenced. As our players’ actions became increasingly difficult to comprehend, more parents fell foul of the gagging order, the super-injunction of suspended thought. Even the most innocuous comments, such as ‘Get a little bit closer, Thanasie!’ were met with rejection by the manager. If he was a top electrician, he would want his apprentices to create explosions rather than be habituated into correct wiring. If you help players cultivate the difficult skills alongside the basics, allow them to choose what to do and then demonstrate your respect for them by praising the effort and ignoring the error, you develop confident, skilful players who take responsibility for their decisions rather than playing like robots.

This philosophy stands in stark contrast to that of Wokingham Rangers, our neighbours from the ribbon development extending towards Hurst. Their assistant manager simply said: ‘I want to see lots of passing and no fancy skills.’ They put this plan into action, overcoming a 2-1 deficit in the first-half to exploit an Oranges performance which had long left Farce behind and was now approaching a checkpoint on the outskirts of Tragic, the ultimate sign of which was when our centre-back (who we’ll call Sol Padeine) ran futile circles around 3 attackers, lost out to a 4th and conceded a goal, which our manager clapped, without irony: ‘Well done, Sol: great skills!’

The paradox at the heart of the game, though, was the fate of our general wunderkind, Connor Mulvaney, who seems to have finally shrugged off the last of this year’s christenings. While everyone else attempted the skills of Old Ronaldo, the one player capable of consistently deploying them played as if in strict accordance with the Scandinavian socialist concept of Jantelagen: the team comes first. His perplexing interpretation of this was to play a series of limp passes to the serially ineffective, all of which were met with ‘Good pass, Connor!’ from the manager’s dugout. Mulvaney, whose presence is normally as reassuring as allotment smoke rising through a winter dusk, looked ill-at-ease, uncertain as to how to conduct his talent.

As parents, though, we were brought closer together; the lone voice of the visionary prophet in a tracksuit who offers praise before advice had given us something to talk about, much as those on the beaches of Weston-super-Mare must have huddled together against the drifting trips of ladybirds in the summer of 1976.

As yet more silence was called for, the carbohydrate shelter beckoned us: a time of hibernation, the ‘dark bee months’ of Saturday lunchtime. Kiera’s dad (way, way beyond – long ago and for ever more amen –  any serious concern for the game; sometimes he spends the whole thing in the foyer) was determined to get the coffees in. I was grateful, but couldn’t even scramble an answer when asked how I liked it: ‘OK, I’ll just get all the stuff in – the milk and the sugar.’ Thanks, Ian.  The beauty of the simple gesture, like contraband revels in the cinema, offered a platform for us to move on. He was in the manager’s camp, and I was less so, but in our small scale  version of ‘the seat reserved for beer by the boys from Abercarn: beer, pontoon, crisps and fags and a croakin’ Calon Lan’, it didn’t really matter. Sharing our ideas with the coach or players would be about as meaningful as projecting immigration narratives onto geese anyway.

 

 

 

 

 

As Caversham Kites emerged from the mists rolling in off the Kennet, leaving Sonning Lock behind them for the descent into Woodley, we prepared for the possibility of Evan being dropped to the bench after a decision he made last night when faced with one of the perennial dilemmas of life itself, never mind football: do I go training or do I go clubbing?

Would he opt for the path of freedom, and hedonistic abandon, or submit to a tackling drill –  designed primarily for him – on the ill-lit astro turf of Maiden Erlegh?

And which careful, euphemistic words would I text to Coach Michael when, inevitably, he chooses the darkness of the local night spot and the neon of the dancefloor lights at the school disco?  I opted for ‘event at school’ – to radio silence from the manager. Evan’s sleeve-pulling and two footed lunges would have to remain unremedied this week.

Word had got round the parents: ‘At least he didn’t tweet about it!’ offered Andrew with reassuring grace. Fears regarding Coach Michael, however, were to prove unfounded for he had made a choice of his own. ‘Can you help me today, Alex?’ asked Coach Peter in supplicatory scouse. ‘Yeah, sure. Where’s Michael?’

‘Oh, he’s off at the races. Last day of the flats. Big day, I think.’

Due to a trauma in the mid mandibles, however, I couldn’t talk much, or shout, and was on a high dosage of painkillers: it was probably just as well after last week’s public reprimand for overslabbing the instructions.

My role was reduced to glove fitter, shoelace man, sleeve reverser, coffee boy, nonsense fielder; I was to keep totally quiet about everything else.

FA censorship would cast its totalitarian spell, even to the extent that when the ref definitely misrecorded the final score (in our favour), I and the Caversham managers were powerless to persuade both him and the league official that it was a draw rather than a Wokingham win.

By way of an aside, Evan experienced another benign form of censorship this week when his class were asked to write a sentence about Donald Trump. ‘He’s an inappropriate man, but he did apologise’ wrote Evan before being asked by his teacher to cross out the second part of his sentence.

With Connor Mulvaney back from a string of christenings, we were hopeful of success against the Kites – until, that is, they soared into a seemingly unassailable 3-0 lead within 10 minutes while Connor, Mark and Evan were roistering on the sidelines.

After a triple substitution, we were soon heartened by the reality that Mulvaney is to football what Muller is to yoghurts: he will always find something special and put it in the corner.

By half-time, however, we were sinking like a Fenland fruit farmer in his East Anglian schloss. It was 4-1. We were in the silt and they were nonchalantly circling above. Or had they merely risen like ghosts whose graves and ‘monuments shall be the maws of kites?’ Could we deem them phantoms and send them down to a footballing slumber?

Could we fire some vanilla choco balls into their corners yet? Almost as soon as Connor had halved the deficit to make it 4-2, however, a freewheeling Caversham lad with a straggly bob executed a limpid strike into our corner, compromising the script.

With Coach Peter having been away on the christening tour with Connor, Evan’s performance seemed to be an enigma to him. Last season, Evan’s tackling had become tentative. This season, in Peter’s absence, it has become bold and obtrusive. So when Peter says ‘Tackle, Evan! Keep going!’ he is effectively asking him to up the intensity from impassioned to potent/dangerous rather than – as he might have intended – from limp/misguided to accurate and effective. As a result, Evan absolutely steamed into a tackle at full-pelt and with both feet off the floor (a straight red in any other game). ‘I don’t know what to say about that’ Peter said quietly to me, with – I think – concealed pride.

So, at 5-2 down, Evan managed to commit a legal tackle and won the ball in his own half before going on a run, eventuating in him outwitting three or four of their players before shooting past the ‘keeper to make it 5-3 to Caversham. Pride and emotion was duly suppressed for the benefit of the FA. With Connor now off the pitch again, Wokingham & Emmbrook counter-intuitively went into ‘park the bus’ mode, playing so deep it was almost philosophical. Peter tried to force them away from their own goal: ‘JACK! Push Evan out! He’s supposed to be attacking! Push him out!’ Eventually, forward momentum resulted in man of the match Jack Parry prodding it home himself to make it 5-4 before Mark Sexton added insult to Caversham injury by outfoxing their AWOL goalkeeper to level the scores right at the end.

As a curious postscript, there was total disagreement about the final score among all parties. I approached the ref  (having assiduously kept a record and totally sure that it was 5-5) who said: ‘It was 6-5 to you.’ I then approached the Caversham managers who thought that it was 6-5 to them and canvassed their players, all of whom confirmed it was only 5-5. I told them the ref had marked it down as 6-5 to us but that I would correct him, to which they said: ‘Yeah, it was 5-5.’ But the league official and the referee himself would not be moved, despite my protestations and insistence that there was no way that we had won the game and it was definitely, definitely 5-5 and a draw.

Sometimes (most of the time) we can’t win and sometimes – it seems – we can’t lose. Today we couldn’t even draw. The official result was 6-5 to Wokingham but for the record books I make it 5 apiece and a brilliant game.

 

 

 

As the Caversham Trents commenced their groggy amble from the minibus which had delivered them from their base near the Nottingham Holme Sluices,  it was difficult to perceive in them any traces of the violent Royalists who trashed Wokingham back in the 1640s. They had a short blonde boy with glasses – who seemed too clever to be a Cavalier – and a lad called Roman who thought he could mouth off all over the place because he had a silly haircut and an aggressive dad. So, a garish little jabberer and a Hogwarts extra would be leading the line for this northern outfit who were otherwise well pruned.

Before the game, Evan quizzed me about Francesco Totti: ‘What – he’s 40 and he plays modern day football? Is he super-good? I wish you could do that. Why don’t you go on an exit trial?’ Life is an exit trial, I tried to say (whatever that is), but the topics were changing now with bewildering rapidity: ‘When I go to America with James, we’re going to go for two months. We’re going to watch the Copa America.’ What? This sounds like a Post A-Level trip, saved up for by a summer temping behind the cufflink counter, rather than the strategems of  7-Year-Olds. ‘Can I come with you?’ Mooning about in South America with Evan and James: sounds like a contrast to Winnersh.

The Caversham manager (one heck of a unit) stood imposingly in loose shorts and a hoodie, like a militant localist surfer on a beach full of tourists. Perhaps the shorts were there to hide a case of Winchester Goose, or were simply a statement that he and his assistant couldn’t care less if we thought them slubberdegullions; they will be who they are without reference to style or opinion. In this climate of free thought and expression, the players and managers thrived whereas the spectators were subject to an FA gagging clause which I would fall foul of later in the game.

Soon after the match started, the Royalists took the lead; we were fairly well-drilled after a training session which emphasised a set shape and passing pattern, while they were inevitably more cavalier, exploiting moments when our rhythm faltered. A few moments later, Evan played a long pass through to Jack who managed to control the ball and fire it into the corner. Then, a superb goal from Evan. When I later asked him which was his favourite goal of the season, he said ‘today’s because I thunderdrummed it into the goal.’ Great description.

Frustratingly, the game deteriorated while tensions along the Rua Joao De Freitas Branco side of the ground rose. Just before half-time, Evan was hacked in midfield and the Trents scored. The accepted wisdom is that parents should be quiet and trust the decisions of the ref. Behind the green railings, we may as well have been Lord Craven, away in Bohemia while his house was confiscated and turned into a prison for the king. But he was still able to raise 50k on his friend’s behalf and send it back to Caversham. As parents, one metre away from the action, we could do and say nothing to express what we thought.

With two minutes to go, Evan was alone in defence with two attackers bearing down on him. I could see what was going to happen, and as Evan attempted a Maradona to get past them, I yelled ‘No!!’ and one of the Trents nicked the ball away and slotted it past the ‘keeper to win the game. I wandered away from the railings with my eyes closed, then turned around, walked back and opened them to see Coach Michael’s face in front of mine and all the parents in silence: ‘he was allowed to try that skill. It doesn’t matter that he lost the ball and it doesn’t matter that we conceded a goal.’

 

The Hurricanes must have visited the finest linen draper’s in the precinct. In splendid sky blue against Wokingham in orange in black, it must have been the most attractive spectacle in Woodley this morning, by far, but it was also deeply wet and miserable.

The weather forecast had helpfully predicted ‘wind, rain and sun’ after the revelation of roadworks on a trunk road north of Crewe, and it was as difficult as ever to find any semblance of meaning or purpose in the world around us as traffic queued for Halford’s, Homebase and The Oracle, yet again.

The Woodley teams point to some specific moments of historical note, however, as they’re named after the local aerodrome as well as the factory which produced this country’s first major batch of Biros: hence we have Woodley United Hurricanes, Woodley Spitfires, Headley Road Internal Ink Reservoir Rovers, Drover’s Way Tungsten Carbide Quick-Drying Brass Sockets FC and the Sandford Lane Jotters, all of whom unfortunately play in a different league to us.

As kick-off drew nigh, Coach Michael was running perilously late, leading to 8 of us gathering around a wet and bedfuddled group of Wokingham players in an attempt to decide who would play in goal and who else would play where. The Hurricanes were lined up in perfect formation while we scrabbled around in the drizzle, managerless.

With the ref not wishing to stay in the rain a moment longer than necessary, he delayed the kick-off for a maximum of 2 minutes, allowing Michael to emerge in an orange daze and boom out a couple of imponderables before the game started. When it did, Wokingham played with passion and intent while Woodley looked as though they were still celebrating Quaker Week.

Jack prodded and probed, eventually managing to tackle a defender and slam the ball into the corner. I was reminded of what surely has to be the question of the week from Evan: “You know when you’re in bed and there are a pack of blue people around you – what are they called?”

Surgeons.

Well, Wokingham transcended the opposition as if under a beneficial influence: Josh shifted the ball onto his favoured left peg and let one fly, drifting the ball into the top left corner. Evan joined the action as goalkeeper for the remainder of the half, but was powerless to stop a low Woodley drive before Jack Parry restored the two goal lead with a clean strike after a typically tenacious forward run. As the curfew bell sounded to signal the end of the first half, it was 3-1 to Wokingham & Emmbrook Oranges.

The problem was that the curiously armless (I say that because they seemed tucked within rather than absent – or maybe he has sensitive hands. I don’t know because it was really wet and difficult to work out) coach of Woodley really ‘went after them’ at half-time, not in a vindictive way but as if to appeal to the deeper ideals of what Brendan Rodgers would call ‘the collective.’

“We look indisciplined; we look a mess; we look out of control.”

“No, we’re not” shot back a mini Hurricane.

“I’m saying that’s what it looks like, and it needs to change.”

And change it did. They came out like The Bow Street Runners while we seemed to emerge from a Sonning chapel-of-ease. They had a forward with a sharp barnet, and looked revitalised.

The momentum seemed to switch to Woodley, but it was difficult to analyse as minor ailments – a bad jaw and ear after being whacked by a ball at close range in my own game, as well as a bulbous shin and wet feet – left me anxious and ill-tempered.

‘In fairness to Wokingham’, as Mark Hughes would say, they did hit the post, Evan was unlucky with a dipping long range free-kick which just went over, and a few other chances fell victim to indecision or slight misjudgement. Woodley added 4 goals without reply, but their fully armed co-manager graciously admitted we should have left with at least a point, when what we actually left with was only an ongoing search for one.