Wilderspool Causeway

‘If you’re leaving please still say goodbye and can you leave me my Silver Jubilee mug?’
Cups, mugs, bowls, saucers and flotillas of cupcakes floating away after washed out picnics in 2012, the ‘keep calm and carry on’ brigade claiming that sitting out in the rain celebrating the monarchy demonstrated ‘blitz spirit’: these are some of the images that come to mind if ‘jubilee’ is mentioned. It’s somehow seen as ‘very British’ and commendable to sit around in abject misery.

G: ‘Who are we playing?’
Me: ‘Purley Jubilee Lions’
G: ‘That’s a bit of a mouthful, isn’t it?’

The ‘G’ here is Gareth, friend and Brentford fan in his cold and groggy Saturday morning form. He was also a player donor, loaning us his son Elliot from the Wokingham Satsumas. The problem today is that we were 3 players down going into Round 3 of the cup. We also borrowed Kian and Ryan (whose names said together sound identical to that of former Egham lecturer Kiernan Ryan) from Wokingham Rangers. To make matters worse, Ciara Butler reported a feeling of indisposition early in the morning; she would be missing too. With manager Pete away in Kent, I was in sole charge and would have to admit that while quiet and attentive in the team talk, the players seemed uncomprehending of my messages. How do you give a team talk to 9 or 10 year olds which truly expresses the nuances of how you want them to play? It’s easy to end up sounding like John Barnes in his World in Motion rap: ‘You’ve got to hold and give, but do it at the right time. You can be slow or fast, but you must get to the line. They’ll always hit you and hurt you, defend and attack. There’s only one way to beat them – get round the back.’

As it happened, we did score a couple of goals from wide areas – as Barnes would advise – but my suspicion that words were lost in translation was borne out by a largely incoherent – and at times floundering – first-half performance. Telling the defence to keep their shape was possibly a mistake; I didn’t mean them to keep their shape at all costs. They thought me a small-time hypocrite of muddled mind when I asked some of them to push up, some of the time. The new boys played extremely well, but needed to lift their heads up a little more; with the ball at their feet, they found labyrinthine paths to navigate and extricate themselves from: paths which could have been made unnecessary with the so-called ‘simple ball’. Football, as Roper Maguire once said, is the art of circumnavigation. If you have to walk around the Hanover Conservatoire, why circle the same tree 5 times on the way? Despite this, the winding paths led somewhere meaningful for us today; it was the attacking initiative of the new players which compensated for the frailties of a defence which as half-time approached would need to be dismantled forthwith.

Ryan epitomised a  ‘get your head down and get on with it’ work ethic, scoring twice, winning a penalty and creating another goal. He also embodied a ‘substance over style’ aesthetic, with hair more unkempt than most mortals could have thought possible. This wasn’t stylishly unkempt or artfully tousled or deliberate in any way; we are talking Unkempt with a capital ‘U’ and a distinct ‘Un’. No thought could conceivably have been further from his mind than external appearance. This was full on, downtown Unkempt. Unkempt-on-Thames. Kemptness Subverted.

He was an example, usually provided by Connor, of how individualism can benefit a team. The result of such mazy running, though,  is that you can become ‘locked in’ at times as though adrift on the streets of Brussels; any moment now – you may be browsing some carefully displayed cakes and pastries in a shop window, tethering your mutt to a lamppost or remarking on a cirrus formation high above the stainless steel and glass – TING! The tram is here. The tram is bigger than you and has right of way. You can’t outwit the tram. The tram is coming and whatever your individual talent or motor, you can’t beat the tram. All you can do is anticipate and see it; scampering into its path and scurrying away from it again doesn’t necessarily indicate skill.

With the score finely balanced after Ryan’s penalty put us 3-2 up, the players were now starting to reconcile their varying styles. Evan, one of the ‘lift your head up and look’ brigade, hadn’t hitherto found his usual passing rhythm in the mud and mire of Solomon Barnato Jol Park. He was happy and privileged to have Gags and Auntie Emma there to  watch him, but was asthma-addled in the first-half and willing to sacrifice his recent scoring momentum in the presence of new teammates.  This changed, though, at a key moment midway through the second half when he dragged the ball past a defender and played it through to Ozzy who went on to finish from a narrow angle. The next crucial moment came courtesy of Kian  (scorer of a rare headed goal in the first half) who, now in goal, made a fantastic one-on -one save to keep the momentum in Wokingham’s favour. We managed to hold on to the end and progress to the next round, but with tactical conundrums still very much alive and frailties as clear to see as strengths.