Reeves Rangers Blues 8 Wokingham & Emmbrook 6 (Mulvaney 3, Saynor, Parry, Sexton)

In crisp late winter sunshine, we rushed across Hurst and Winnersh with secret knowledge of byroads and a dim view of the moral high ground occupied by slow moving land cruisers and ladies out for a morning hack.

Passing the horses, we were on the verge of Lines Road and of missing kick-off having lost all sense of past and present in the restorative steam baths of Emmbrook, only managing to leave the house at 11:08 for an 11:30 kick-off.

Once in Woodley, you realise you’re in an extraterritorial realm: the zone of the hobbler. If you take any turn from Loddon Bridge Road, be prepared to wait indefinitely for people who limp and drift across their chosen terrain with laboured obliviousness rather than the mildly festive spirits of weekenders on a gentle trip upriver to the salt-vapour frames or the 5-a-side pitches of Woodlands Avenue.

You’ll have to wait between empty pavements behind a driver who’s stopped at a zebra crossing out of sheer respect for the stripes. Be prepared to witness universal accommodation of a limp jaywalker’s right to roam in whatever pattern they please. So pervasive is the general slowness and sense of ‘giving way’ that a post-match  trip to the precinct can feel liberating. You can have a free coffee, if you’ve remembered your MyWaitrose card, and wander around the flower stalls, Labour stands and well stocked charity shops with a sense of total freedom.

Chatting to Coach Peter about what differentiates an excellent, potentially top level player from a merely good one, he concluded the following, based on his own playing experience against West Ham, Wimbledon and the rest: ‘Communication and time. Not, primarily, skill on the ball.’ Excellent players are able to see the whole picture of what’s happening in the game and can therefore speak intelligently to teammates. As a result, they and their team seem to have time on the ball, even in difficult situations. The difficult thing, according to Danny Murphy, isn’t playing the pass, but seeing it in the first place. Similarly, keeping things Irish-Liverpudlian, Ronnie Whelan is an advocate of waiting on the ball, believing that passing without thought is the primary weakness of average players. As for a voice from the capital, Teddy Sheringham was happy to stand still, even at the risk of looking lazy. Too many players run into a good position, only to run out of it again in the next moment – they don’t want to be accused of lack of industry.

In practice, it would be difficult to adopt these principles against the agrarian style of Reeves Rangers Blues who, in our previous meeting, seemed to think ‘have a crack, son’ was a reasonable instruction to a goalkeeper, despite an edict from the league chairman that teams must retreat to the halfway line to enable the opposition to pass the ball along the ground from a goal-kick, thus enriching their development as footballers.

I’m not the only parent who finds it difficult to speak about this team without anger welling up inside, so we tried to watch the game with a degree of detachment and resignation. Their managers have perhaps stood at the crossroads and looked, following the ancient path worn by a certain Premier League manager from Newport: ‘Tony played for Bournemouth in defence but now his playing career is in the past tense…Tony was a man of great ambition so he hung up his boots for a managerial position. He introduced the tactic of simultaneous fouling which he watches from the sidelines in his baseball cap scowling.’

Amazingly, though, Wokingham were so fluid and fast-moving in attack that by half-time it was 5-2, with goals conceded due to aberrations of the upstairs kind rather than ungovernable play from Reeves Rangers. After about a minute and a half, Evan scored with an unstoppable piledriver and the score was already 2-2. In typical buccaneering style, Connor then scored from all angles to execute a brilliant hat-trick, including one of the best goals we’ve witnessed after one touch passes from Evan and Josh led to a thunderbolt from the left wing.

The ref denied us a penalty at a crucial point in the game, using the phrase ‘natural body shape’ to validate the handball. This was despite the later award of a penalty to Reeves Rangers. Are we now to assume, then, that this was the result of an ‘unnatural body shape’ from our defender? Ultimately, we weren’t quite adept enough at understanding how to counteract an attritional style which included total disregard for our goalkeeper’s space. Despite some almost implausibly good play, and the very best of efforts,  we were left to look towards our sabbath loaves and salted beef without the point(s) our fluent football seemed to deserve.

Author: Alex Saynor

I like to write poems set around The River Thames, Central Berkshire, South West London, Bournemouth and South Wales - I’ve recently had poems published by Two Rivers Press, Football Poets, Places of Poetry and Wokingham Today. Further background to my interest in Reading and surrounding areas: https://tworiverspress.com/2023/09/05/margins-of-reading-a-poem-by-alex-saynor-for-peter-robinson/amp/ View all posts by Alex Saynor