If the dank greyness of the Berkshire lowlands could lift, temporarily, maybe we’d see a buttery cue ball moon that’s all melted off to one side as a Thunderbird moves through Winnersh Triangle under a Muscatel sky.
Having not won since December 17th, following a controversial new year promotion, Evan needed some pepping up, an infusion of emotional iron, hopes cantilevered ever higher, beyond the peaks and troughs of blood sugar and mere results, towards a genuine understanding of what it means to be alive and listening to Tom Waits.
Tom is far better placed than me to offer a gee-up, so as we clanked through the fields of Hurst we turned to his electric reflection on the stars and stripes: ‘The sun is up, the world is flat, damn good address for a rat. Smoke is blacking out the sun/at night I pray and clean my gun…Hoist that Rag.’
Evan observed that Tom had possibly been taking ‘wrong helium.’ Would Johnny Cash be better? ‘I went to sleep in Shreveport, woke up in Abilene, now I’m wondering why I’m wanted at some town halfway between.’ No. Crash Test Dummies? ‘I’ve tasted your best guacamole, siesta’d at noon in the cool of the soil…Sometimes it’s too hot for cooking.
One wants just a salad. And then comes a breeze in the evening/ men light cigars and the scent fills the air.’ Not really. He wanted ‘Now Party Anthems’, but I just couldn’t find the CD.
On The Stade de France pitch at The Goals Centre, the Woodley manager sniffed the air like an old warhorse as his team, ‘proud to be sponsored by Subway’, according to the club website, warmed up looking like mobile sandwich packets.
We hadn’t played this team before, but word on the bush telegraph was that they sought dominion over the whole of Woodley from Waingels Road to South Lake and most particularly over Emma Saynor’s Woodley Zebras, their arch-rivals, whom they wished to consign to the shade of Beechwood Avenue and the mature specimens lining it.
Far from the varlets, firkin hurlers and sourbummed coaches of Theale we lost to last week, Woodley at least offered intermittent nods to decency as they passed and moved like celtic fast food. True, their hefty keeper – stars shaven into his round head – considered it acceptable to shoot from his goal kicks, in contravention of the spirit of the game and Andre Villas Boas. True, they routinely pinched the ball whenever it was a Wokingham throw-in, but they weren’t violent as an expression of club policy, in contrast to both Reeves Rangers and Theale who launched aerial assault after aerial assault while we tried in vain to beat them on the carpet, opting for the Schleiffen plan by pressing down the flanks while they bombarded our goalmouth from the air.
As well as Wokingham (mixed of ability, strength, gender and the extent to which their mental dolly mixtures make up a quarter) facing roughhouse tactics from the opposition, they also have to deal with a constant propensity to self destruct. The problem is, we don’t self destruct spectacularly, creating valuable collateral damage in the process, but tend to scuttle underwater quietly with a devastatingly poor back pass or catatonic roll from the ‘keeper. Not for us the moral assault of a Zidane or Cantona, the dubious blaze of glory or ‘divine wind’ of a kung-fu kick at the green mesh corralling irritating parents.
No useful point is made by a miscontrolled pass or a ball played into the path of an attacker: bland mistakes create no shrapnel, as they say, but in this instance they did put us 3-0 down within two minutes.
A period of relative stability ensued as Wokingham rallied, led by a heavily gloved, hatted and talented Connor Mulvaney who managed to forge a meandering course through the Woodley defence and fire us emphatically into contention. He’d gone for ski-gloves rather than a typical Thinsulate number. Our defence remained soft. If styles of play were characterised as ice creams, Woodley’s would be play-doh: radioactive, luminescent, following no known recipe. Wokingham’s would be a sundae with all the jazzed-up garnish exploding on the taste buds to hide the Mr Whippy within.
Evan was off the pitch in the first half, having entered into intensive bargaining with Coach Peter to exempt himself from goalkeeping duties. When he entered, mummy and Iris had appeared from the mists of the Loddon to yell inverse-invective. In Iris’s case, this ranged wildly in the space of seconds: ‘Look! There’s Evan! Number 5! Come on, Evan…Can we go home in a bit?’ As is typically the case when family and friends come to watch, their presence was talismanic and Evan was soon picking up the ball with a view to making a meaningful impression on the game, pinging off quick passes and getting into space. This tactic bore notable fruit when he eluded the Woodley defence and scored having been picked out from a long throw.
Ultimately though, it was back to the cross channel ferry bar to reflect again over coffee, bacon rolls and all sorts of vending machine nonsense on another lesson in the dark arts of success in Woodley.
Wilderspool Causeway 