After a celebratory glass of Verdant Headband or Semi-Skimmed Occultist in Shepherd’s Bush, some of the Wokingham faithful showed signs of having recently strayed towards the borders of dehydration as they waited under the dark autumn clouds of Woodford Park for another confrontation with our old adversaries from across the river.
As the first half progressed, some of the players also seemed less than fully connected to the world at large. Wokingham & Emmbrook were so dominant that goalkeeper Thanasie Xanthoulis seemed to check out of life entirely. He just stood there, motionlessly, with his forehead resting against a post. It looked like he was meditating, a bit like when Iris hears something so far beyond the remit of her understanding that her eyes widen into a stare reminiscent of a bus taken out of service, or when cousin Wilbur seems – like a philosopher – to try to pierce the darkness merely by looking.
Evan played at the heart of defence and seemed to enjoy spraying the ball about with both feet, playing a mixture of simple passes and more ambitious cross-field balls. The attack was dominated by Connor Mulvaney and Josh Dance who interchanged like pros, dropping the ball off with each other as if it was a child being passed between parent and nursery key worker: there was little chance of Caversham intervening.
There are times in games when the singing becomes abstruse, usually when there’s some kind of lull in the action. Notts County’s anthem, for example, consists of the line: ‘I had a wheelbarrow; the wheel fell off.’ Bristol Rovers sing ‘Sometimes I live in the country/ Sometimes I live in town/ Sometimes I have a great notion/ To jump into the river and drown.’ This was definitely a match which lacked tension; we could have done with a tune from the parents to add an extra dimension. John Betjeman’s ‘Indoor Games Near Newbury’ would have worked well, I think: ‘Gabled lodges, tile-hung churches, catch the lights of our Lagonda as we drive to Wendy’s party, lemon curd and Christmas cake. WOKINGHAM! WOKINGHAM!” Or perhaps we could sing about the almighty skeins of Canada Geese which squawk their way over Winnersh with abandon. The documentary This Farming Life shows a farmer lighting a firework to scare them off his land. As the rocket flew up, they didn’t simply flap into the next field. They went: effed off back to Canada. Migrated. They were gone.
Caversham didn’t offer much by way of coherent football, huffing and puffing to little effect. Their manager kept calling out ‘Benjamin Baker.’ I’m not sure if it was a coded reference or if there really was a Benjamin Baker there, but it did little to help them from a tactical perspective. Parents kept half an eye on the game but mostly talked about other topics such as the new shopping centre in Bracknell, saying things like “I went there and thought ‘this is actually quite nice'” and “I’m not a Bracknell person but when I used to live there I thought it was quite nice.” Others of us played games in which you match Japanese cities with supermarkets and birds to generate names of football teams which we could play on tour. You should try it: ‘Nagoya Carrefour Snowy Owls’, ‘Sapporo Baltic Nighthawks’, ‘Nagasaki Budgens Budgerigars’, ‘Fukuoka SuperValu Night Parrots’…good fun.
Wilderspool Causeway 