Month: December 2016

Some mid-season stats to kick off proceedings here, followed by the inevitable reflections on routes across the Thames and forgotten gloves etc.

Played 15  Won 6 Drawn 1 Lost 8  Goals Scored: 61  Goals Conceded: 84

Goals scored:  Mulvaney: 25  Saynor: 13 Parry: 8  Sexton: 6  Dance: 5 Xanthoulis: 2 Butler: 1 A. Mulvaney: 1

 

We seem to be locked into a never-ending battle with our neighbours from north of the border. Why are we playing Caversham again? Twyford Comets are in our league, but we’ve played them only once. Perhaps they’ve dissipated into the sky and are only visible at the ‘year’s midnight’ when ‘the sun is spent, and now his flasks/send forth light squibs/no constant rays’ and ‘the whole world’s sap is sunk.’ That could be Evan’s analysis, anyway. Looking up into a Crowthorne sky last Sunday, he said ‘Look, it’s Twyford! I know that because there’s still some detail in the clouds.’

Twyford, twylight – whatever. Coaches Peter and Michael were in Prague and London respectively, so before Connor, Amelia, Evan and I could even begin to contemplate the mists rolling in off the Loddon, we first had to find our way out of Woosehill. Which way do you turn when there are anonymous brown buildings in every direction? Citizens of Lower Earley have faced this crisis of being for the entire duration of their tenancy or period of home ownership. Woosehill is no different. All  roads curl at disappointing angles and you’re left with blind decisions, invariably leading you to either the right road in the wrong direction or the wrong road in the right direction, merging with a network of cul-de-sacs to confound even the most traffic-aware satnav, rendering it lost as a hospital corridor pacer looking for a ward that doesn’t exist or a bus to a time they’ve long since left.

‘In 200 yards, turn right but bear left. Do a U-turn and take the ramp. Continue for one mile, descending on the elevated section of the carriageway. At the roundabout, take the seventh exit and head back from whence you came.’

‘Where are we going?’ asked Amelia, understandably. It’s best to turn off all the voices at this stage. You’re doing a U-turn, but only because there’s nowhere else to go. It reminds me of heading for Accrington but ending up in Henley, doing a ten-point turn on an irrelevant country lane after the fire brigade had shut the town down.

While we were aiming to cross the Loddon on Sandford Lane, Caversham had a few bridges to choose from to traverse the ‘dirty old river’: Reading, Caversham, Sonning and if they’re really desperate – Whitchurch. In this weather, they would surely be reminded of Spike Milligan: ‘Let us look at the River Thames/ One of England’s watery gems/ Oily brown, greasy, muddy/ Looking foul, and smells of cruddy/ The conservancy say they’re cleaning it/ So why is it the colour of shit?’

Leaving all this shit behind, we weren’t exactly liberated. The manager has to remember: goalie gloves, goalie kit, footballs, Christmas cards for the team, notebook, pen, crumpled squad rotation diagram, Connor and Amelia’s apples and biscuits, Evan’s drink, inhaler, club jacket, fleece and shin pads, the skills trophy, the man of the match wristband, how to be civil and the if-all-else-fails fundamentals: wallet, keys and phone.

It’s always so convoluted; we had long deviated from Heron’s Shortest Path, but perhaps it’s best not to overreact or compare. Maybe Caversham had their own shinpad crises to contend with, their own over-beveraged parents or bumpy mornings to put up with. Perhaps they couldn’t find their inhalers, either. Maybe they were stuck in Waitrose car park (after stopping for a coffee but forgetting their MyWaitrose card) or behind a laggard on Peppard Road. Our under preparation wouldn’t equate to over preparation on their part.

On the way, Connor (he of 25 goals in 15 games) decided to float an idea my way: ‘Alex, do you think I could maybe play for three quarters of the game instead of half today?’ As you can imagine, I was not entirely unsympathetic to his perspective. ‘Connor, I’m not entirely unsympathetic to your perspective here mate. Erm, let me think about it.’ If there was any glitch in the memo, Connor would play for the duration.

In professional football, you can expect fines for pretty much anything, including newspapers in the medical room. Imagine the levy for missing two games running, without notice. This unnamed player deserves a Christmas bonus though, for good as he is, he gave me license to torch the spreadsheet and ditch the rotation. It really was foggy.  After a minute or two, we conceded our customary soft early goal after the ball sort of ricocheted off their striker and rolled in at 2mph. We’re so used to this, we just accept it as incompetence tax and move on. Soon we had a corner and scored from an unusual source: the ball fell to Ciara on the edge of the box and she wellied it for all she was worth: 1-1. Evan was out of the picture this stage, digitally revolved and carrying a knee injury sustained in training.

Thanasie Xanthoulis – another rare and temperamental source – popped up with the second goal before Connor opened his account on the stroke of half-time. I had been nicknamed ‘Big Sam’ (preferably for a degree of tactical brutalism rather than mere size, I guess) but in truth there wasn’t much of a tubthumping message I could give them at the break, other than to keep doing what they were doing: it will lead to the same results.

Evan tried to play in the second half, but limped off tearfully after only a few minutes. He wasn’t able to get back and defend, but we needed him to. It stayed 3-1 until fairly late in the second half, when Evan decided to re-enter the fray as a striker, minimising the possibility of stress on the knee. He soon picked up the ball opportunistically on the edge of the box and made the score 4-1, but it wasn’t comfortable. Caversham had a young Maldini at the back, a wise and nonchalant player who could easily play a telling ball to unlock our historical sieve of a defence. With 3 minutes to go, we were 4-3 up and anything could have happened. Thankfully, Evan fired the ball into the left corner with the outside of his right foot and Connor added another to make the final score 6-3 to the Satsumas. Amelia won the Skills Trophy for some fantastic flourishes, consistently outwitting her opponents who seemed to carry a degree of complacency in their assumption that they could take the ball from her at will.

On the way home, things took a philosohpical turn. Connor’s idea was to play ‘Would you Rather’, and he opened up with: ‘Would you rather be a bin or a window?’ This seemed weird, but also a great question. You’d naturally gravitate to the window side of the equation, perhaps, but quickly remember that a window can be cracked or smashed whereas a bin is routinely emptied of its rubbish and can be cleaned with anti-bacterial wipes.

 

Texts referred to:     A Nocturnal upon St. Lucy’s Day by John Donne

Father Thames by Spike Milligan

 

 

 

 

What a bizarre game against the shoulderclappers of Wokingham & Emmbrook Rangers. Coach Michael was about as organised as Britain’s response to Brexit, arriving without goalie gloves or the teamsheet. While he rushed back through the drizzle to get it, the ref said ‘In positions please!’ I had no choice but to select the team myself. Mark Sexton arrived late, but seemed altogether absent. Why oh why did I put him in goal?

We started with broadly the same line-up which was so unyielding last week. After 5 minutes, Michael arrived with his typically exaggerated view of the players’ fungibility. He rang the changes. Thanasie was taken off and collapsed in tears. Ciara entered the fray in her beanie hat. Josh was put on – except Josh wasn’t actually there, having omitted to arrive for the game. Amelia was thrown on instead. Confusion reigned.

I had been drafted in as garb monitor and henchperson – I tried to keep tearful Thanasie mollified, but he started making strangled, high pitched noises like an injured lupus cub. On the pitch, things weren’t much better. With Mark ‘gone’ (it would be an insult to space cadets to put him in the same category), when Rangers started taking shots, it was a disaster. Goals started flying in like seagulls at break time. At half-time it was 8-0.

For the team talk, I expected to take a back seat; the rotation policy has become a shibboleth – we’ve sort of been neutered by a spreadsheet. However, my perception of Michael as one of life’s great indifferentists (imagine Ringo Starr’s voice, amped up to 10 and pierced with a knitting needle: ‘Win or lose it doesn’t really matter: well played’) was ill-founded. He was not a happy bunny. He went absolutely Carragher: ‘We need to turn up here! You’re not doing anything we learnt in training and you’re not playing anything like you played last week.’ In a surprising gesture, seeing as I was there last week in Michael’s absence, he then said: ‘Now Alex, what have you got to say to them?’

Newly unsilenced, I was taken aback and my mind went blank. This was an opportunity to earn Michael’s trust after our confrontation a few weeks ago. So here goes: ‘Jack, you’re wandering around like a godwit. Now get your head on. Mark, I don’t know what to say to you. That was disgusting out there today. Amelia, this is football: you’ve been flailing aound like you’re drowning in the Limpopo. Now screw your head on. Evan, clean your teeth.’ No. What we really gave them was a clear reminder of the simple things they did so well last week: keeping their shape, passing, tackling back and taking their chances in the final third.

The second half was a completely different proposition: anyone could have told them they just needed to wake up. Evan was now up front and began to turn on the style, gammoning up their defence something proper and firing into the corner to pull a goal back. Rangers were not content to drift into the West Woodley doldrums, though. They had their own objectives to work towards and would do so, picking through the rubble of the opposition train wreck with scant regard for the casualties. They even sent their keeper up for corners, despite being 10 goals up. Crack shot Connor Mulvaney waited on the sidelines, patient and watchful in our brand new club jacket. His hat-trick in the last part of the game meant we won the second half 5-4.

There was absolutely no sugar coating from Michael after the game. “In the first half we weren’t very good. We were…”                                                                                                                  “Rubbish!” said Ciara.                                                                                                                                  “Well yes, in a word. Crikey, I feel like a proper manager here!”                                                      He sounded like it, too, and it was heartening to hear of the strengths of the second half after the absolute trout and zugzwang of the first.

 

n.b. Mark had a good second half, bless him: compos mentis, fiery and skilful.

 

Parklife: the pick of Friday night’s excellent range of covers by King Loud at the Broad Street Tavern brought all Adidas and Fred Perry in the house to the dance floor for a raucous, lager-fuelled nostalgia trip. Parklife back in the late 80s and early 90s, a time I remember with great fondness, meant playing on  bobbly, excrement-peppered surfaces in front of parents liberated from latter day FA Charter reminders that  ‘coaches are human beings, referees have feelings and linesmen are normal people whom we should treat with love and respect.’

When a player received the ball it was customary for parents to yell ‘Get rid of it’, causing us to bungle all over the pitch and hope for an individual moment of brilliance or a propitious bounce ‘in the mixer’ to get us out of jail. Parents would routinely argue or even fight with opposition parents and respect  was absolutely not on the agenda. One dad was a TV racing pundit, even more of a wide boy than Boycie from Only Fools and Horses. I remember him strutting onto the pitch with a fat cigar to confront the manager in the centre circle: ‘You don’t know what you’re doing. Why isn’t my lad up front?’ One fight spilled over into the car park after the game. Both mine and my brother’s teams contained players who were essentially criminals, some of whom are now in prison or dubiously bailed.

It was rough around the edges, but unforgettable and allowed us to develop great ball control under pressure – before we booted  it away again. Also, Saturdays were amazing. Training was at 9am after a chat with the milkman. We picked up a King Size Mars Bar on the way home and I savoured it after a hot bath while reading Roy of the Rovers magazine and waiting for Saint and Greavsie to start. There would be further treats in the afternoon with either a visit from grandparents or a trip to Fulham before The A Team in the evening and bed.

With Evan though, although we try to make his Saturdays broadly similar, we’d have to talk about ‘Astro-turf life’ rather than ‘Parklife.’ I’m not sure if it would quite have the same ring to it: ‘Confidence is a preference for the habitually rotated children of Wokingham: Astro-turf life! A morning stroll can be obstructed by a well meaning official with a clipboard: Astro-turf life! Who’s that floppy mop laughing? You should cut down on your chickpea felafel mate. Have a Mars Bar!’

England’s park life genuinely used to be mental. According to Stuart Hylton’s Little Book of Berkshire, the first recorded football match in the area was in 1598 between neighbouring parishes on the outskirts of Didcot, with church doors as goals. In a distant echo of Reading’s current vice captain, Chris, one of the parishes had a player called ‘Ould Gunter’ who ‘carried a dagger throughout the match with which he murdered two of the opposition, Richard and John Gregorie.’ This would have been a game of mob or ‘Shrovetide’ football, with teams of unlimited numbers. So was he a local villain, outlaw or evolutionary anomaly acting on instinct? Maybe, but ‘what was particularly striking was that Gunter was the local parish priest.’

Propelling a pig’s bladder between churches, with the only rule being to avoid manslaughter or murder in the process, was a rule which even priests couldn’t uphold: these are the roots of English football. Maybe the 80s weren’t so bad.  Coaches Michael and Peter, though, seem to favour tactics evocative of a time long before Christ and the mob values of his witnesses.

Wokingham & Emmbrook reanimate an era before 299 bc when Cuju was invented, a game which was unmistakably football, albeit with only one set of goalposts. FIFA recognise this as the first form of the game. As Cuju evolved, it split into two branches:  Zhuqiu and Bhaida. In Bhaida, which flourished during the Song Dynasty of 960 – 1279, goals became obsolete. There were no goalposts and scoring a goal was no longer part of the game. Points were awarded for keeping possession, practising skills, playing elegantly and outwitting opponents; they were deducted for poor passes and fouls. Judges awarded points for the quality of play and decided the winner accordingly. Wokingham’s footballing philosophy originates, as far as I can deduce, in Cuju; it’s the essence of Baida.

In the build up to the game, the coaches sent  a somewhat testy message to prepare me to take charge of the team: ‘Play the ball out from the back. That’s our base. Allow the players to make mistakes as that’s how they learn. The score doesn’t matter…’ A few weeks ago I had unwisely shouted out an instruction to Evan and was publicly reprimanded and embarrassed for doing so. I would never play a long ball game or have a go at someone for making a mistake, though, so I was slightly irritated. They are Baida personified: goals seem to be an irrelevance and an irritation, particularly if we score them. Indeed, when I texted later to report on the team’s goals and general success, the response was a manually produced ‘raised eyebrow’ emoticon: quizzical rather than celebratory.

Despite any residual frustration, though, Mrs Dance and I would stick to instructions; I admire and respect the coaches despite falling short of their ideological position. Mrs Dance took the team through an official warm up, while I rummaged around in plastic bags trying to find inhalers, goalie gloves, coats, drinks and our Gabor Kiraly Fulham goalie kit with ‘SAYNOR’ on the back. Soon after the game kicked off, Mark Sexton snuck through the Caversham defence like a lipid in The Royal Mint and sent us into an almost unprecedented 1-0 lead.

In the second half, we had to decide how rigidly we’d stick to the formation and philosophy. The coaches wanted 4 goalkeeper rotations in 40 minutes, and we adhered to that. However, when Evan drifted back into defence when he should’ve been attacking, we turned a blind eye: Evan loves defending, and we were 1-0 up. There was a bit of transgressive pragmatism in operation but we didn’t ‘park the bus.’ With no substitutes at all, there had to be room for interpretation to allow the players to sustain their brilliant show of energy.

It remained 1-0 until half-time before Caversham struck back with two impressive solo goals to condemn us to a probable defeat. Evan’s defensive position allowed him some space, though, and when the ball fell to him just inside their half, with only two minutes to go, he curled an equaliser brilliantly into the top left corner. A minute later, Josh broke free from the defence and struck decisively to win the game.

No acrimony followed the final whistle. Instead, the players lined up and shook each other’s hands sportingly, a gesture I eagerly monitor and slightly cringe at. It’s the perfect moment for a subtle comment, refused handshake, dirty look or slap to spoil the atmosphere. There was nothing of the sort. Their coach told us we had some good little players.  ‘Nothing to do with our Vorsprung Durch Technik though, mate’ I answered as we headed back towards the bar for a coffee and a bacon roll.