Software or satellite: I’m not sure which was at fault but we were plunged into confusion on the edge of Winnersh when instructed to turn from Snowdrop Grove to Bluebell Meadow as soon as possible. This wasn’t helpful – not even remotely – because the sat-nav had led us from a starting point which wasn’t our own and therefore didn’t lead to our real world co-ordinates away from Snowdrop Grove. We only needed it because the usual route through Hurst was inundated, damaged and changing, so we ended up close to where we started like the character from ‘Around the Dial’ who keeps searching for a favourite DJ, a top selector who had fallen out with the corporate powers upstairs and couldn’t be located: ‘Somebody said you had a minor nervous breakdown. Was it something that you heard? AM, FM, where are you? You’ve got to be out there somewhere around the dial.’
Likewise, the football took us on journeys of futility, full of errors and atonement. It was ultimately difficult to assess if the game was morale sapping, character building, a mixture of both or none of the above. Coach Michael, on his own because brother Peter was in Paris for the marathon, recruited me as a kind of Sammy Lee figure, a willing but ultimately hapless presence on the touchline, doing odd jobs to varying effect. Michael wasn’t quite at the peak of tactical fluency either:
“Hayden, you’re right-midfield – on the left.”
“Am I right-midfield or left-midfield then?”
“I just told you” replied Mike, looking at me for verification.
“Mike, I think you actually said he’s left and right midfield.
‘Did I? Oh right…’
At half-time, the pattern was repeated. Usually lucid, today Michael lurched from Warnockesque barrage to pure incomprehensibility. The first volleys were aimed at Thanasie Xanthoulis, the temperamental hero of the first half who had effectively made Woodley Xanthoulis-on-Thames, such was the clattering, irrepressible thrust of his play: “I scored two goals, Michael.”
“Yes you did Thanasie – well done. BUT IT COUNTS FOR NOTHING IF YOU DON’T DO THE SAME IN THE SECOND HALF. ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME?”
Bit harsh, I thought.
“Right: Amelia, right-back. Evan, right-back…”
What was going on here? Evan also felt he’d been told to play left-midfield, and Ozzy wasn’t sure where he was supposed to be so they arranged an informal swap between themselves which somehow ended up with Evan playing up front. With the score at 2-2 going into the second half, the game felt tense.
General talisman Connor had declared himself unavailable for selection as he was away on international duty at his Gran’s in Bristol, but we still had Josh the steely gymnast who ‘flits from box to box just like a butterfly.’ The idea was for him to pick the ball up in midfield and thread it through to Evan who could get behind their defence and put us ahead. The problem was that Evan was struggling to find meaningful space; he could find a bit of space, but it tended to be tucked away in an irrelevant pocket of the field or out by the touchline somewhere – he needed to play more centrally, in behind the defenders and in front of goal. The first time he managed to do this, he executed a volley from a lofted through ball, which the ‘keeper saved to his left; the second time he got through, he let the ball bounce before guiding it on the half-volley into the net.
Josh’s determination had yielded three second half goals for the team and in the death throes of the game, it was 5-4 to Wokingham and would have remained so if our goalkeeper – ball safely in hand – thought twice before their final, catastrophic act. It was a decision which, were Sir Alex Ferguson in charge, would have led to a crisis meeting at a hotel in Alderley Edge to ‘thrash it oot’: a powder puff pass to the Caversham centre forward who took his time before calmly rolling the ball into the net to draw the match.
The post-match aftermath felt like being at the Wokingham car valeting premises you exit through a potholed road and a minor swamp, with the remonstrations feeling as futile as the business itself. The chief purpose was to console the probably inconsolable, the careworn goalkeeper who was in the grip of the type of regret which follows an entirely avoidable mistake and the ensuing ‘learning opportunity’ that you are probably never going to need or draw upon because the decision was so manifestly wrong in the first place. All that can be said is ‘it doesn’t matter’, but that falls on deaf ears when you perceive yourself to be the sole reason for failure and general disappointment.
But Michael had ‘gathered some wits aboot him’ by this point and was inspirational in his post-match assessments: ‘Listen. You win as a team, you lose as a team and draw as a team – not as individuals. And because of that point today, you’ve won the league.’
Jack – big character in the dressing room – then organised a German style run with celebratory Klinsmann power slides in front of the goal. Furthermore, we realised the reason for Michael’s less than linear thinking as he rushed away from the scene of jubilation like a fugitive wanted worldwide: a Scouse fugitive, searching for a screening of the Merseyside derby he was missing for the sake of an Under 9’s game against Caversham Trents: top man.
Wilderspool Causeway 