Rotherfield are from the edge of the Chilterns, though I won’t use the term ‘hillbillies’ to define them. We’d had close encounters with them before, after they’d been guided down in Range Rover Evoques from among the kites for a 7-7 draw and a narrow win last season. While they’re at home and relaxed in the natural world, we’re confined by major transport arteries and bronchial problems as we amble around among the kebabs and tyre vendors of RG41. Wikipedia is dismissive: ‘modern Winnersh exists mostly as a sleeper town. Relentless housing development on all sides will soon see Winnersh exist as part of an urban continuum between Reading and London (citation needed).’ Apparently it all went wrong when the Crimpy Crisps factory was demolished. So: they’d been training at altitude while we’d been training in crankshaft emissions.
It was one of the most frustrating first halves I can remember, crying out for someone with a different picture of the game to that possessed by most of the youngsters on the pitch: a deep lying architect who could reconcile the incoherent strands of the game with a telling pass or a quiet word in the ear of a midfield flounderer – someone with composure, vision and intelligence: unflustered, yet tough; exploratory, yet guarded; economical yet uneconomical when it matters; someone who knows when to slow the game down and when to speed it up; when to be direct and when to be indirect – someone who realises that all the above are probably false dichotomies in the first place: someone with a sixth, seventh, even an eighth sense with which to cleave to a set of defining principles while mobilising the team to defend a corner or understand the potential of a throw-in: a meditator, a philosopher, a seer, a footballing mystic of sub-suburban Reading.
They had names printed on the backs of their golden shirts: ‘Potter’, ‘Boden’, ‘Elcott-Rawnsley’, ‘Schmidt’; monikers such as Henry and Ernie were bandied about at will. We wouldn’t be wise to underestimate these boys as they lined up with obvious clarity of tactical purpose. From the start, we poured forward in search of an opening goal with new signing Hayden Harris conspicuous with skill and progressive runs while Evan was consigned by formulae to a watching brief on the bench. Rotherfield were undaunted, opting for something akin to the Wilkes-Barre Variation in the face of our ultra-aggressive Budapest Gambit. They simply absorbed the pressure through the middle before sending balls through the gaps we’d left. While not technical masters of the game, they undermined our notions of defence three times before the interval with close range finishes. Mulvaney, too, was rotated to the bench but we missed the cut and thrust of his buccaneering runs and exquisite finishing. Their goal was under siege, but the ball tended to fly past it like a coconut in the London Docklands, leaving no permanent trace in the record books.
Eventually though, with Evan having entered the fray as sweeper, Connor Mulvaney crossed himself on the sideline and hope was ignited among the travelling contingent of asthmatic Wokingham fans. If one goal went in, surely it would be open season and we could retreat to our amply populated anonymous housing estates, footballing dignity intact. The first goal happened after the chilternised goalkeeper randomly skewed the ball over his own head and into the path of an onrushing Connor who then immediately reclaimed the ball after their kick-off to embark on a winding run culminating in a composed finish to make the score 3-2. The canny Rotherfielders then proceeded to calm the heck down and take their own sweet time over throw-ins and set pieces, hoping to find salvation in the mysteries of depleted time.
Thankfully, though, justice was done as the ball ricocheted fortuitously off bar and post to seal a satisfying draw at the fag end of the game and a richly deserved man-of-the-match award for Connor, today’s Chief Satsuma and King of the Bronchiole Belt. It was a good effort from both sides, but at the end our sentiments resounded with that of freestyle rapper Big Kumi: ‘Ah, G, well he thought he’d won, but I come from the RG41.’
Wilderspool Causeway 