Wilderspool Causeway

No need to own the road: just buy the tollbooth. Apparently that’s a business concept which enabled Warren Buffett to make a lot of money. If you have shares in Gillette, what else do you have to worry about? Wilkinson Sword?

Find an unavoidable gateway in life and set up a tollbooth, porter’s lodge, hut next to a gate in a national park occupied by a semi-vagrant with a dog, The Mauritius Command and a flask of hot squash. When success is so palpable, yet the standards required to achieve it are so low that you can’t trip over them: that’s the dream.

In footballing terms, this idea complements my favourite definition of skill: ‘minimum effort for maximum effect.’ By this definition, a block or a simple pass can be every bit as skilful as a Cruyff turn or trans-Linekar Panenka.

‘Let the ball do the work’ describes the efficiency of sending the ball somewhere with one touch rather than taking it there with several – a bit like putting a letter in the post box rather than cleverly dodging traffic on the Guildford bypass to take it there yourself.

AFC Caversham, presumably the offshoot of an older, bigger Caversham FC north of the Charvil Meridian,  are backed by some big hitters in addition to Sheabutter Cottage (sourcers of Marula balm, ‘activated charcoal’ and Sankofa cream) and the usual retinue of local solicitors and tyre merchants. They are a ‘Nike Partner Club’ and the managers’ jackets attest to support from VISA, the ultimate tollsters and 24 hour portal people.

Would their commercial acumen translate to successful tactics on the pitch? Due to necessary ‘shape work’, Wokingham’s defence has been deep of late: too deep. If the game was taking place in the English Channel, for example, our defence would be up by Orkney as a distant blockade. While this might prevent the ultimate insult of enemy access to the Atlantic (i.e. defeat), it leaves coastal towns of the midfield region such as Scarborough, Whitby, Hartlepool, Lowestoft and Yarmouth open to attack from the Germans.

They’ll attempt to lure the dreadnoughts of Evan, Mark and Connor from their base at Scapa Flow, making an Atlantic route possible. It worked, to an extent, and Caversham scored first, but with Evan and Connor now occupying space in Caversham territory to counter-attack, the consequences were devastating.

Evan scored twice from just inside their half and Connor began a rout which made the score 6-3 after only ten minutes. How difficult would it have been for Caversham to use the Visa or the Sheabutter money to send a scout to watch us last week? £15 and a hotdog would have told them that you give these boys an inch and they’ll take a yard, half the North Sea and your fading hopes of victory.

My favourite example of the dividends of ‘shape work’ is, of course, Fulham’s run to the Europa League final in 2010. Whatever you think about Roy’s England tenure, Paul Konchesky and John Paintsil could not have triumphed over the likes of David Trezeguet and Fabio Cannavaro without masterful coaching in the arts of defensive discipline.

The irony is that in glorious Portsmouth sunshine two years earlier, Danny Murphy defied manager’s orders and scored after a run he wasn’t supposed to make, keeping Fulham in the Premier League and on course for Europe. A mundane conclusion might be ‘rules are made to be broken’; among the straight lines and rows, there needs to be be some fluidity, some wiggly lines, improvised lemonade stalls and the bravery of C.S Lewis’ Somerset Light Regiment.

Sad as it may be, I once wrote a poem in honour of Roy and Ray, beginning ‘With those air miles, Roy, you could tour the moons of Jupiter/Ensure the planets are in correct formation/no-one stepping beyond their sphere/Your Wikipedia page has crashed my computer/somehwere between Gravesend and Neuchatel…’

Once the bigger guns were off, a phoney war began and the score remained 6-3 for about 20 minutes, with Wokingham remembering to pass and provide width while in possession, and to compress the space without it.

In a final twist, Evan returned to the pitch with two minutes to go having limped off after a crunching challenge and the disappointment of a penalty miss early in the second half. Our coaches invited the slightly eccentric bobble-hatted ref (a few weeks ago he spent the whole game wandering about with a coffee) over to the touchline for a chat which looked oddly heated; we were winning, so what was the problem? I think they were indirectly making sure Evan would have at least a  couple of minutes of play after the earlier stoppage.

Things don’t normally work out like this, but with the last kick of the game Evan hit the ball across the ‘keeper to make the final score 10- 4 in a minute that possibly shouldn’t have existed. On the way out, there was the standard 90p Galaxy-snare of the vending machine before a rush back to Winnersh Triangle for a probable part-time purgatorial party session at Kids ‘n’ Action.

As for AFC Caversham, this is only the first chapter. We meet them again in the next round of the cup where another close eye on strategy will be in order – we haven’t detained them in the Gutter Sound yet.