The current price to cross the river between Pangbourne and Whitchurch is 60p; if it was down to me I would increase this to 80p immediately and then gauge if further increases would be viable. Cars shouldn’t be on the road so much these days anyway – if you’re local and want to walk or cycle into Oxfordshire or Berkshire, you can do so for free. Also, forget all the bollocks spoken about ‘leadership’; the dream job is to sit in the hut at the entrance to a car park or toll booth, reading, drinking coffee and chatting to drivers or pedestrians now and then if they feel like it.
Whitchurch villagers will have crossed the bridge at around 8:15 this morning as part of their very short journey to Prospect Park in Tilehurst. The club obviously have a very strict Covid-19 protocol, with parents required to wear masks and space themselves out across the length of the pitch. The referee had forgotten to arrive for the game so a large, gruff man wearing a pink Man Utd shirt and a ‘Southcote Colts’ jacket came over to give each team a pre-match speech and announce that he would be reffing the game. I’m not sure who he was affiliated with or where he came from exactly but he was there and sometimes that’s what’s important. He refereed in a very laid-back yet authoritative way. He had already taken a bit of grief from a couple of parents due to his shirt, and this helped to establish a relaxed tone to the game – a sort of negative charge. Fair play to him for being so relaxed and friendly, whoever he was.
Within a few moments of the game starting, Mason Ralph side-stepped a defender and clipped the ball into the top left corner. A goal from Connor Mulvaney soon followed, but Whitchurch began to fight back, prodding and probing in midfield to try to cultivate a meaningful rhythm to their play, but it didn’t work. Evan was on the bench in this half, as was Hayden Harris, who in a nonchalant and surly (yet ultimately well meaning) manner would convert four chances in the second half. Meanwhile, Whitchurch tried to salvage some hope and purpose from proceedings. ‘Where the fuck’s he come from?’ They had a really quick player who would suddenly emerge to scupper an attack, sprinting across the pitch in an effort, perhaps, to compensate for one or two of his less dynamic teammates. This showed great fortitude, and it should be emphasised that a scoreline of 12-0, while convincing, is also deceptive. There were aspects of Whitchurch’s play which militated against an even more devastating outcome, and these should be viewed with respect. A ten minute period in youth football can include 5 or 6 goals, perhaps as emotions become difficult to corral.
In the second half the surging waters of Wokingham’s attack – like the Thames governed by an unaccountable, thrusting and inexorable westward tide, or the Emmbrook abandoning the parameters of nature to shatter misconceived notions of its scale and potential destructiveness – collapsed the lingering dam of Whitchurch’s resistance, leading to a deluge of goals: liquid football. Hayden finished chance after chance, Kian Smith scored an absolute thunderbolt and with almost the last kick of the game, Evan curled a free-kick just inside the left post. It was great to see him score a free kick, as this is a strength he wasn’t able to develop at Bracknell last year because young Ronnie had priority.
As for Whitchurch, they could ponder, cogitate, move magnets around a magnetic board or hold a glass island post-mortem, tip tapping away on an ipad or tablet to try to impose some retrospective meaning on what transpired. Or they could find answers from a deeper source than the mind’s rationality, but how should they go about this? I wish them true success in their ongoing footballing pilgrimage.
Wilderspool Causeway 