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.
Wilderspool Causeway 