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.
Wilderspool Causeway 