Wilderspool Causeway

As it was the last game of the year, this post includes a statistical update prior to the inevitable reflections on missing beanie hats, scrappy football and the shadows of mortality etc:

Played 15 Won 8 Drawn 1 Lost 6

Goalscorers: C. Mulvaney: 17, H. Harris: 11, E. Saynor: 9, J. Dance: 7, J. Parry 4, M. Sexton 2, A. Mulvaney 6, O. Ferguson 1, C. Butler 1

Woodley has a transient population on Saturdays, but you can spot the residents hobbling around the precinct as if newly transported to the Isle of the Dead, lost in the realm of the becrutched but unable to navigate their way back to the dock to find an onward embarkation time. Instead, they are surrounded by confusing signs: ‘Tampa Bay Fish Fingers’, ‘Gravadlax-on-Thames’, ‘Highgate Road Walks and Washes.’ Maybe for them it feels like being a child again, slightly misinterpreting the central point of most conversations. On the way to the game, Evan said his teacher would be missing in the New Year because of ‘jewellery service: it’s where you go and chat with a judge for two weeks to see if he’s right.’

We were due to play Twyford on the neutral territory of Woodley Goals Centre, but if the name of the pitch – ‘Lokomotiv Stadion’ – represented reality, we’d have been off to Berlin on the Eurostar last Wednesday, arriving via Brussels and Cologne to board the Berlin- Warszawa Express, bound for a wander around the old town and Royal Castle before settling down for the 700 mile journey to Moscow, perhaps stopping in the birch forests of Belarus for a foggy friendly against AC Zhytkavichy Youth FC, avoiding the free-roaming bison from the ancient woodlands.

The game started and miraculously, it seemed, we were in the ascendancy. Connor seized the ball after only a few seconds and smashed it into the top corner: 1-0. What’s more, we seemed to have the game buttoned up. With Connor and Evan surging forward, Jack acted as a hinge between defence and attack, intercepting Twyford attacks and moving the play on skilfully. Twyford, for ever at a crossroads in life, rely on a fulcrum, a conduit through whom everything meaningful they create will pass. The problem, though, is that while their main man can play, he also hits the deck whenever possible, going down in instalments at the merest hint of contact: a typical modern day footballer. But we can’t be too critical, rising to every incitement; none of us is too far away from a Peter Buck moment in life, throwing yoghurt at an air steward before appearing at Uxbridge Magistrates Court the following morning to make amends.

With the score at 1-0, the Twyford maestro went down like power in a thunderstorm, plunging the first half into miserable darkness: penalty, surely. The ref blew his whistle and pointed, leading to the tangential thought: what would be the collective noun for penalty takers? It takes bottle, or in Twyford’s case, a dive. So what would we go for? A dive of penalty takers? A bottle? A Batty? A Waddle? Redemption for Chris: ‘England win the World Cup as their Waddle of penalty takers defeats Germany’s. Jake Livermore sends England into Russian raptures.’ Instead, though, it was a free-kick – which Twyford missed.

Half of the Comets seemed to struggle for dynamism, finding themselves caught in possession with regularity; Wokingham exploited this, particularly on the right side of midfield where Evan dispossessed the left back to fire the ball past the keeper at his near post twice in quick succession, the second goal a near replica of the first. With the score 5-0 at half-time, what could possibly go wrong in the second half?

When you have a big lead, surely you need to follow the example of Gillette and place a gigantic banner above the concourse at Waterloo Station, despite the fact that your closest rivals are Wilkinson Sword who can only work around the peripherique of shaving culture, adding a superfluous blade here and there in a plucky attempt to gain some traction in the market: still, don’t be complacent – tell London it’s game over.

Instead, with a revolutionised line up to maintain equality of game time, the veterans of the first half had to contend with the rhythms of new teammates, rhythms which were were retrogressive – atavistic, even – in nature; they swarmed around the ball, throwing composure and tactical shape to the four winds. It was a committed though generally hapless and misguided second half performance. When the first goal was slashed in off the boot of our own keeper, Clive wondered if the final score could genuinely be 6-5 to Twyford. A genuinely ridiculous display of ineptitude led to a second goal for Theresa’s boys after one of our defenders sent the ball spinning through the air behind his head and ultimately into the goal.

Thankfully, Hayden Harris, our junior Peter Crouch on blue smarties, raced away with the score at 5-3 to put a little more daylight between the teams. This was compromised , though, when further calamities made Clive a prophet: with 2 minutes to go, we were only 6-5 up and there was an epic goalmouth scramble to decide the game.

The ball bounced around in the box for what seemed like several minutes, with absolutely nobody in control of where it would end up. This culminated in probably the most unconstrained celebration we’ve ever been part of as eventually the ball broke loose to set Ciara Butler – a great defender but not by any means a common goal scorer – bounding up the pitch for a one on one with the keeper to settle the match: Could she? As the Twyford keeper assessed his options, Ciara just calmly tucked it underneath him to make the final score 7-5, undermining what would surely have been the greatest resurgence in the history of Twyford.

After the game, it was off to the Dog and Duck for a mid season convocation of coaches and assorted parents prior to a trip to the garden centre for another glimpse of a parallel dimension. ‘Oh, it’s Tom the Woodman’, they said. Eh? ‘Well you look exactly like Tom the Woodman, a man who works on site – we’d asked to see him.’