Everyone just edge out into the middle and take your chances: make lots of eye contact in four directions and remember the words of Aunt Marjorie who said ‘The Arc de Triomphe is the safest place you can drive.’ Just head into the mix – you don’t know if you’ll make your turning unless you put yourself out there. That was the situation at the crossroads this morning as the lights were out all over Winnersh. It’s a dog eat dog place, from the ‘bright air conditioned hell’ of the Triangle to the outskirts of Homebase.
The scenes in Winnersh prefigured the pattern of the game, relocated from the bogs of Woodford Park to The Silesian Stadium at Woodley Goals Centre. For those in the dark, each pitch is named after a stadium of historical note, this one being the Stadion Slaski, a Polish stadium in the city of Chorzow in the Silesian highlands, historically under Bohemian overlordship before being conquered by the Prussians in 1742.
Amelia would be leading the line. Would she be Prussian in outlook, or more in keeping with the sensibilities of the Habsburg Empire? Would she attack with a sense of the ground’s history, its historical weight? Time would tell. Evan was on the left and Connor on the right: Evan and the Mulvaneys – a passable band name at the apex of the formation.
As in Winnersh, you have to try. You have to put yourself out there. If you don’t shoot, you don’t score. In goal for the Cougars was a lad who had been loaned out to us last summer. Without wishing to cast aspersions, the loan didn’t quite work out. Clive – Mark’s uncle – was particularly sure of what was written in Woodley’s Polish heavens: ‘You watch; he’ll play a blinder today.’
In the first half he must have saved about 7 goalbound efforts, while we blazed over 7 or 8 more. It seemed like a goal would never come until Evan went on a little run and swept the ball into the corner at Clive’s loud instigation: ‘Just shoot, Evan: SHOOT!’
On a bigger pitch than usual, the players were drawn out of position as if in thrall to an area of low pressure in the Gulf of Genoa, adrift on the mistrals of childhood. Just before half time, Evan went back into defence and attempted to block a shot only to be sent flying backwards after the ball hit him straight in the Gulag Archipelago. He got up with a smile as a cautionary ‘make sure you count them, Evan!’ sounded from the coaches’ technical area.
With a new roster in the second half, the team were dominant but continued to squander chances. New signing Hayden Harris has scored goals, but always seems slightly out of alignment with the team’s core principles. His dad’s advice to ‘hit the ball up the effing pitch’ means he has to listen to conflicting instructions, with the coaches’ emphasis on ball retention playing second fiddle to the sound of a latter day Dave Bassett cutting through the Woodley air and the wisdom of the coaching manuals: ‘why play 50 passes when you can do it in one?’
Despite this, Hayden played well and scored with a lovely free-kick, curling the ball into the bottom corner. Thanasie ‘mad dog’ Xanthoulis – having apparently received an elbow – exacted revenge Roy Keane style, felling the blonde aggressor in an apparent revenge attack. His determinaton, crossing and re-crossing the boundaries of acceptability and good taste, eventually resulted in the final goal (and man of the match award) after he surged through and smashed the ball into the bottom corner.
An unconventional performance, but Winnersh had spoken. From the moment you pass Sadler’s Lane and go under the motorway bridge, you enter a different spiritual and emotional microclimate, an environment which poses you questions – rhetorical questions which contain their answers: answers which are probably best avoided, but often salutary.
Wilderspool Causeway 