Wilderspool Causeway

They hadn’t navigated one of the world’s major rivers to get here, boating down the Mekong or ballooning in over the Po, but whichever way you look at it they would definitely have had to cross the Kennet as they made their way east from their base on the outskirts of IKEA.

Woodford Park, the venue for Evan’s games this season, is easy to get to but very difficult to get in to. For the last two weeks, for example, we’ve been greeted by a cutthroat gesture from the steward at the entrance, indicating that regardless of whether we’ve paid to be there or not, they can’t accommodate us under any circumstances.

You might recall that we had similar difficulties accessing The Goals Centre in previous years, obstructed by a well meaning official from the Berkshire Youth Development League who had graduated magna cum laude with a degree in Genially Lingering in Foyers from Binfield Tertiary Learning Centre and was studying a distance learning master’s in Lobby Clogging – but at least he was welcoming with his clipboard, timetable, agenda, referee’s briefing suite and vision for the future. No cutthroat gestures attended our arrival there, ever.

On a beautiful morning of wind, swirling leaves, brooding skies, sun and rainbows, Coach Peter was alone with a threadbare squad as yet again an assortment of factors were at work to deplete us; what’s more, Coach Michael was off with the Fillies and Mares at Ascot for a day on the flats, with the going soft but heavy down the hill to Swinley Bottom.

We therefore had no substitutes against a Calcot team full of fire and endeavour, shorn high with the clippers; tough tackling, industrious, hoofing and freewheeling. No signs of mourning for the SavaCentre days, Megabowl or Utopia nightclub, at least among the players – this was a fresh generation with the opportunity to fashion their own futures in the Lingonberry quarter of Reading.

Unfortunately, apart from one or two glorious flashes of brilliance – burning bush moments in the Autumn sunshine – we were a little more inhibited. At one point, for example, one of our players missed a tackle and burst into tears, leaving the pitch to sit on a heap of coats. As we tried, one player short, to make an impression on the game, Coach Peter knelt down beside the distraught figure to offer calm words of solace and encouragement.

We could only speculate as to where the other absentees were, because none of the parents had hit the WhatsApp group to explain. Were they at a Button Moon convention at Teddington Exhibition Centre? Or perhaps they were eating heirloom tomatoes and scrambled eggs at The Oakwood Centre: we didn’t know.

The problem was, our players on the pitch were scarcely more present than those away. Calcot’s first goal resulted from a horrible defensive mix-up, setting a pattern which was repeated throughout as our old defensive demons returned in number.

After this goal, though, Evan scored with an outlandish strike from the halfway line, lofting the ball instinctively towards goal and seeing it bounce over the ‘keepers head and into the net. He then – arguably – scored a second in quick succession as Josh Dance arrowed the ball at him from a throw, which he then controlled and shot towards goal on the half volley. The goalkeeper backpedalled, clawing the ball away from its seeming position behind the line. Regardless of whether it crossed or not, Jack Parry was on hand to slot the rebound into the corner to make sure.

With our teary eyed player now back in the fold thanks to the patience and motivation of Peter, it looked as though we might be able to consolidate the advantage. An ill wind followed, however, as Connor, the engine of the team, took his turn as goalkeeper, leaving the rest of the team to play without a captain. While Wokingham & Emmbrook sought to play in keeping with the game’s best principles, Calcot followed the beat of a different drum, launching the ball up into the wind to see where it would fall.

The match was lost to the certainty of chance; if you hit the ball into the mixer regularly enough – and have some good finishers, as Calcot do, then the game of percentages will work in your favour. Amidst the chaos, though, were some moments to salvage. Gymnast Josh Dance executed a forward roll, mid-dribble, and carried on with the ball. More unusually, Evan managed to execute a successful slide tackle.

This is notable because Evan’s tackling record could be described generously as ‘patchy’; sometimes he quarter-heartedly dangles a foot in the general direction of an opponent and at other times he lashes out and takes a player’s legs with no obvious reference to the ball. Last week, he clipped someone’s ankles, cynically. Coach Michael later challenged him on this, but Evan seemed not entirely comprehending of the problem. I chipped in: ‘Evan. Listen. Evan. Look at me. Was the ankle tap you did a good or a bad thing?’ He thought for a minute: ‘Medium’, he replied, with the not-entirely-faulty logic that the lad had it coming to him.

So, Wokingham’s unbeaten record this season fell among the fluttering leaves. It was still a praiseworthy effort though, given the emotional wobble and lack of substitutes. Let’s hope they got their selfies with Mr Spoon and will be back – rejuvenated of mind and spirit – to face Purley Jubilee Lions FC at the same time and place next week, respectful of  – but never defined by – the gestures of stewards and league officials.

With our games usually confined to central Berkshire and the immediate environs of Reading, we had never faced a team from this far east. OK, we’re not talking Frinton-on-Sea or the Yellow Sea, but the mediocre, self-deluded, nothing town of Maidenhead where according to John Betjeman you ‘talk of sports and makes of cars in various bogus Tudor bars and daren’t look up and see the stars, but belch instead.’

Maidenhead Boys & Girls FC – in breach of the 1968 Trade Descriptions Act Section 7(i) by virtue of the final seven letters of their name – lined up in luminous yellow shirts and shorts and socks in all the colours of the rainbow.

One of their managers rambled fruitlessly up and down the touchline in a constant loop, as if in thrall to an invisible chicane, whereas the other stood impassively in regulation Adidas, an anti-social chaperone who had the bearing of a surly tribal elder or stubborn herdsman rather than a football coach. Is there any point in acting like an unapproachable witch doctor when you look like Phil Tufnell and you’re standing in a wide-open field in Woodley? Aloof, sour-faced crabbiness is perfect for ignoring your neighbours and fellow dog walkers in Maidenhead, but does little to galvanise 9-year-olds to play good football – and so it proved.

I didn’t particularly warm to this Maidenhead team, perhaps coloured by the most unsavoury incident witnessed at this level so far. Though a disorganised rabble, most of their lads were determined and tried hard within the boundaries of moral acceptability. They tended to occupy the central zone of the pitch, retreating in numbers as Wokingham passed the ball progressively through the midfield; Evan played with skill and composure, winning the man of the match award for his incisive passing and calm on the ball. Maidenhead’s combative attitude yielded several free-kicks, one of which was converted with a superb left-footed curling drive by Josh Dance whose slow motion caterpillar celebration perhaps only served to make a combustible moment more likely.

It arrived at the end when Amelia Mulvaney, who had previously scored with a clinical strike into the corner, was delivered an uppercut by a little thug she’d just dispossessed and outwitted. This was in clear sight of the ref, who explained afterwards that ‘no matter how sinister the incident, all we can do is ask the manager to sub them off.’ The Maidenhead managers reacted by subbing the boy immediately so as to prevent a scene, but didn’t issue a single word of reproach to the little git as he laughed his way to the sidelines.

Thankfully, incidents of this type are rare and perhaps that’s why there are no mechanisms in place to deal with them. We won’t ignore it, though, and we won’t forgive the town, the ‘Royal Borough’ it’s part of, the bizarre management of the team, the local council or even the lad himself – not for a very long time, if at all, even though it’s Sunday. It reminds me of Bart’s famous phrase when he and Lisa were locked inside a church and Lisa sank to her knees in prayer: ‘Lisa, this is neither the time nor the place.’

This was an impressive performance from the team, if a little too comfortable at times. Evan chipped in with four assists from midfield, playing delicately weighted balls into Hayden Harris on two occasions and sliding in for a shot on the keeper which was followed up by Amelia Mulvaney for an important goal to put us two up early on. Twyford struggled to make an impression on the game, perhaps due to an unusual philosophy which led to the whole team being rotated every five minutes: they seemed to have brought a whole coach load of players across the wastes of Sonning for the game. The Twyford manager – a grizzled South African who looked like a cross between Jurgen Klopp and Joe Mangle – keep shouting in support of the ‘Comuts’ but struggled to cultivate much coherent play when there were so many grandparents and parents to satisfy in his own ranks.

With players missing due to the Norovirus, commitments in the Black Country and spreadsheet misinterpretation, Wokingham had to face the multitudes of Twyford with no substitutes or room for misadventure. With Amelia Mulvaney playing at the apex of the Christmas Tree formation, she was fed chance after chance by Connor and Evan who made the Twyford rearguard look about as impregnable as the buffer zone around Theresa May’s lectern. She had five near misses before poaching two goals before half time; her dad, Coach Michael, with motives as inscrutable as I’m sure they were sound, then took the decision to remove her from the fray in the second half, thereby denying her the chance of a first hat-trick. She spent the second half in goal, brought out of isolation once to confidently tip the ball around the post and deny Twyford a consolation. With Wokingham in command, cousin Connor then risked charges of complacency by leaving the game entirely with 5 minutes to go; this wasn’t Robin Friday running through the gates of Elm Park and straight into the Spread Eagle after scoring a hat-trick, though. He was off to a major Cub event in London.

Twyford and Klopp/Mangle/Warne will have to regroup, and I’d advise them to do so in fewer numbers – they need to slim the roster a bit. Maybe not ‘root and branch’ reform, but certainly a bit of judicious pruning’s in order. After the game, Evan and best mate Ozzy disappeared into the shrubbery and tall trees, emerging a while later with a friendly and slightly doddery lady from Winnersh who had advised them to climb with caution: straight off the pitch and up the trees – a refreshingly classic activity before tortuous traffic and a one hour journey from Woodley to Reading just for a decent post-match milkshake in Reading’s ‘you’re not smelly anymore’ alley.

Playing football, climbing trees, drinking milkshakes, hanging around in the Black Country, going to cub conventions, chatting to dishevelled South Africans: we may not have learned much from the game itself today, but we definitely had a decent window on some wholesome activities occurring in the world around us.

After a celebratory glass of Verdant Headband or Semi-Skimmed Occultist in Shepherd’s Bush, some of the Wokingham faithful showed signs of having recently strayed towards the borders of dehydration as they waited under the dark autumn clouds of Woodford Park for another confrontation with our old adversaries from across the river.

As the first half progressed, some of the players also seemed less than fully connected to the world at large. Wokingham & Emmbrook were so dominant that goalkeeper Thanasie Xanthoulis seemed to check out of life entirely. He just stood there, motionlessly, with his forehead resting against a post. It looked like he was meditating, a bit like when Iris hears something so far beyond the remit of her understanding that her eyes widen into a stare reminiscent of a bus taken out of service, or when cousin Wilbur seems – like a philosopher – to try to pierce the darkness merely by looking.

Evan played at the heart of defence and seemed to enjoy spraying the ball about with both feet, playing a mixture of simple passes and more ambitious cross-field balls. The attack was dominated by Connor Mulvaney and Josh Dance who interchanged like pros, dropping the ball off with each other as if it was a child being passed between parent and nursery key worker: there was little chance of Caversham intervening.

There are times in games when the singing becomes abstruse, usually when there’s some kind of lull in the action.  Notts County’s anthem, for example, consists of the line: ‘I had a wheelbarrow; the wheel fell off.’ Bristol Rovers sing ‘Sometimes I live in the country/ Sometimes I live in town/ Sometimes I have a great notion/ To jump into the river and drown.’ This was definitely a match which lacked tension; we could have done with a tune from the parents to add an extra dimension. John Betjeman’s ‘Indoor Games Near Newbury’ would have worked well, I think: ‘Gabled lodges, tile-hung churches, catch the lights of our Lagonda as we drive to Wendy’s party, lemon curd and Christmas cake. WOKINGHAM! WOKINGHAM!” Or perhaps we could sing about the almighty skeins of Canada Geese which squawk their way over Winnersh with abandon. The documentary This Farming Life shows a farmer lighting a firework to scare them off his land. As the rocket flew up, they didn’t simply flap into the next field. They went: effed off back to Canada. Migrated. They were gone.

Caversham didn’t offer much by way of coherent football, huffing and puffing to little effect. Their manager kept calling out ‘Benjamin Baker.’ I’m not sure if it was a coded reference or if there really was a Benjamin Baker there, but it did little to help them from a tactical perspective. Parents kept half an eye on the game but mostly talked about other topics such as the new shopping centre in Bracknell, saying things like “I went there and thought ‘this is actually quite nice’” and “I’m not a Bracknell person but when I used to live there I thought it was quite nice.” Others of us played games in which you match Japanese cities with supermarkets and birds to generate names of football teams which we could play on tour. You should try it: ‘Nagoya Carrefour Snowy Owls’, ‘Sapporo Baltic Nighthawks’, ‘Nagasaki Budgens Budgerigars’, ‘Fukuoka SuperValu Night Parrots’…good fun.

Rotherfield are from the edge of the Chilterns, though I won’t use the term ‘hillbillies’ to define them. We’d had close encounters with them before, after they’d been guided down in Range Rover Evoques from among the kites for a 7-7 draw and a narrow win last season. While they’re at home and relaxed in the natural world, we’re confined by major transport arteries and bronchial problems as we amble around among the kebabs and tyre vendors of RG41. Wikipedia is dismissive: ‘modern Winnersh exists mostly as a sleeper town. Relentless housing development on all sides will soon see Winnersh exist as part of an urban continuum between Reading and London (citation needed).’ Apparently it all went wrong when the Crimpy Crisps factory was demolished. So: they’d been training at altitude while we’d been training in crankshaft emissions.

It was one of the most frustrating first halves I can remember, crying out for someone with a different picture of the game to that possessed by most of the youngsters on the pitch: a deep lying architect who could reconcile the incoherent strands of the game with a telling pass or a quiet word in the ear of a midfield flounderer – someone with composure, vision and intelligence: unflustered, yet tough; exploratory, yet guarded; economical yet uneconomical when it matters; someone who knows when to slow the game down and when to speed it up; when to be direct and when to be indirect – someone who realises that all the above are probably false dichotomies in the first place: someone with a sixth, seventh, even an eighth sense with which to cleave to a set of defining principles while mobilising the team to defend a corner or understand the potential of a throw-in: a meditator, a philosopher, a seer, a footballing mystic of sub-suburban Reading.

They had names printed on the backs of their golden shirts: ‘Potter’, ‘Boden’, ‘Elcott-Rawnsley’, ‘Schmidt’; monikers such as Henry and Ernie were bandied about at will. We wouldn’t be wise to underestimate these boys as they lined up with obvious clarity of tactical purpose. From the start, we poured forward in search of an opening goal with new signing Hayden Harris conspicuous with skill and progressive runs while Evan was consigned by formulae to a watching brief on the bench. Rotherfield were undaunted, opting for something akin to the Wilkes-Barre Variation in the face of our ultra-aggressive Budapest Gambit. They simply absorbed the pressure through the middle before sending balls through the gaps we’d left. While not technical masters of the game, they undermined our notions of defence three times before the interval with close range finishes. Mulvaney, too, was rotated to the bench but we missed the cut and thrust of his buccaneering runs and exquisite finishing. Their goal was under siege, but the ball tended to fly past it like a coconut in the London Docklands, leaving no permanent trace in the record books.

Eventually though, with Evan having entered the fray as sweeper, Connor Mulvaney crossed himself on the sideline and hope was ignited among the travelling contingent of asthmatic Wokingham fans. If one goal went in, surely it would be open season and we could retreat to our amply populated anonymous housing estates, footballing dignity intact. The first goal happened after the chilternised goalkeeper randomly skewed the ball over his own head and into the path of an onrushing Connor who then immediately reclaimed the ball after their kick-off to embark on a winding run culminating in a composed finish to make the score 3-2. The canny Rotherfielders then proceeded to calm the heck down and take their own sweet time over throw-ins and set pieces, hoping to find salvation in the mysteries of depleted time.

Thankfully, though, justice was done as the ball ricocheted fortuitously off bar and post to seal a satisfying draw at the fag end of the game and a richly deserved man-of-the-match award for Connor, today’s Chief Satsuma and King of the Bronchiole Belt. It was a good effort from both sides, but at the end our sentiments resounded with that of freestyle rapper Big Kumi: ‘Ah, G, well he thought he’d won, but I come from the RG41.’

‘I don’t mean this crudely, but do you have any resentments from the past?’ You had to feel for the man facing this question as he stood in the cafe queue after the game. He was in for one heck of an intense coffee session, starting with an opening delivery which is absolutely unplayable. If you say ‘yes’, you’ve opened yourself up. If you say ‘no’, you know you’ve lied and if you pause, you give the game away. It didn’t help that the guy asking the question looked about 18 and placed a suspect coffee order (decaf mocha) while the man with potential resentments was about 50 and ordered a much more solid americano.

I overheard snippets of the conversation which followed and it appeared to be some kind of mentoring session, with the older man surely a reluctant ‘mentee.’ I heard comments like ‘really growing’, ‘really flourishing in his faith’, ‘lacks spiritual ambition’ and ‘Just a bit of feedback for you. You spoke for slightly too long for what they could take in. Just one thing I thought could be better, that would be good for you to know.’

Evan’s coaches don’t tend to offer ‘feedback’ (criticism), without first checking that the player is ready to hear it. He played well, making some important contributions in attack, but felt disappointed that he hadn’t scored or played as big a part in the game as he did last week. When his manager said ‘well played today’ after the game, Evan suggested that he wasn’t altogether happy with his performance. I saw the manager’s eyes light up at this, but he just said ‘OK, so what were you not happy about?’ before listening to Evan’s answer and then saying ‘Right, well I think one thing you could try is this…’.

That’s not to dismiss the faith theme altogether. As The Boss observed, ‘Forty days and nights of rain have washed this land/ Jesus said the money changers in this temple will not stand.’ The lady who served Iris and me a burger and a bacon roll before the game was certainly not intent on exploiting Woodley’s sacred ground for commercial gain. We were charged £2 for both delicious items when the advertised price was £5.20. Happy days. We ambled over to where Evan and friends were already warming up ready to face AFC Caversham, a bunch of mop tops from north of the river. Could we repeat the success of last week’s resounding win against Reeves Rangers?

While Evan and the Oranges were playing in front of us, Iris was post-burger, running around kicking a Peppa Pig ball with Ian Butler, Ciara’s dad. He essentially formed a crèche as the game developed, chasing all over the park with the little brothers and sisters and not stopping until the game was over. He’s a very generous guy but I also wonder if he was a bit bored by the match, and to be honest I couldn’t blame him.

The pitch was bobbly, to say the least, and the left side of it seemed to exert a gravitational force, drawing most players into its corridor of frustration; Evan tried to find space up front, but our midfielders couldn’t ‘get out’ of the throng of players to release the ball. It was quite a scrappy game, certainly not one for the scouts and purists. Connor scored an excellent long range free-kick, but the three other goals were tapped in after unlucky rebounds and ricochets.

So it was a very encouraging win (2 on the bounce now), but with an element of frustration tucked under the surface. This continued while listening in to the faith mentor in the cafe afterwards, though it was quite amusing to see the young enthusiast’s mum arrive to pick him up an hour later and address the older man: ‘Thank you for meeting him. It’s really lovely of you to do that. He said you’d been trying to get together for a few years.’ Good bit of mothering, that.

Wokingham & Emmbrook Oranges are now sponsored by a company from Solihull called Lafarge Tarmac – the people to turn to if you’re ever in need of some decorative aggregates or a bit of Topscape drainage gravel to round off the weekend. If you research the company in more detail – inspired, perhaps, by Daddy Pig’s famous loan of ‘The Wonderful World of Concrete’ in Peppa Goes to the Library – you find an impenetrable world of gypsum activities presided over by Martin Riley and Cyril Ragoucy. All sorts go on at the aggregate quarries, depots and terminals, but precisely what happens remains open to conjecture. Mathias Blamont, writing for Reuters, once labelled Lafarge Tarmac ‘unloved’, but an Irish company called CRH snapped it up for £5 billion. Who has true discernment when it comes to tarmac?

During the summer transfer window, Michael and Peter Mulvaney successfully landed Ozzy Ferguson from Wokingham & Emmbrook Cougars (free transfer) and Hayden Harris (unattached), while retaining the services of Leitwolf and top goalscorer Connor Mulvaney, whose pro-zone heat map would resemble a plate of spaghetti augmented by tomato sauce: there’s no frontier territory for him. How long he will remain a Satsuma before Binfield come knocking  (with all their incentives) is an open question.

Reeves Rangers Hoops were founded by a QPR fan called Terry who used to live on Reeves Way, just off Wokingham’s car valeting and safe storage strip: the bubble wrap belt. We tend to lose to them, suffering at the hands of a pragmatic, agricultural style of play which owes much to the gravity-assist tactics of Dave Bassett, John Beck and Tony Pulis, touchline prowlers more akin to air traffic controllers than football coaches. Wokingham, meanwhile, are so determined to pass the ball out from the back and along the carpet that a goal-kick feels about as welcome as an opposition penalty, such is the frequency with which well intentioned cross-field passes go sadly awry.

The first goal was conceded in typical fashion: a corner was whipped in, only for our goalkeeper to punch the ball into the net rather than away from goal, as would seem more logical and helpful. Our players were passing the ball around well,    and new boy Harris drew gasps with an audacious volley against the post before Josh Dance tapped the ball in from close range after a goalmouth scramble, sending the penned-in visiting supporters into raptures. Being joined together in such close communion was a real advantage, allowing us to belt out club standards at quite a volume, beginning prior to kick-off with a spirited reflection on one of last season’s lowest moments:

‘The Mulvaneys had a dream to build a football team
Had no midfield, lost 20-0 so we formed a Christmas Tree
(the following week) with three at the back, Josh Dance in att-a-a-ck
Watch out Rangers, we’re on our way back.’

The momentum now in Wokingham’s favour, players poured forward in search of a second goal before half-time, leaving a huge expanse at the back which Reeves exploited on the counter-attack to make the score 2-1 at the break.

Evan, sidelined by spreadsheet for the first half, began the second half at full-back and immediately made a difference to the pattern of play, linking up particularly well with Connor Mulvaney down the left. Coach Michael’s post-match WhatsApp verdict made welcome reading: ‘Evan was brilliant when he went on, so composed with some great diagonal passes. He also won the ball back a lot for us.’

Then the floodgates opened: Josh found himself in space, controlled the ball and equalised before Evan threaded a ball through to Josh who squared it for Connor to fire into the top corner: 3-2. Evan then picked the ball up on the right and shot a long range, looping half volley into the corner as Reeves Rangers folded like an oily deck chair.

But what do you make of this? A strange intervention from the ref: after a shoelace  stoppage – usually interpreted as valid: inevitable, even, given the age group – he turned on our coaches, the Mulvaneys. ‘It’s your time you’re wasting, you know!’ I’m not really sure why he decided to do that, or what he hoped to achieve. If a shoelace is untied, then it needs to be tied again – doesn’t it? At that point, there’s  no point envisaging tighter initial knots. Or is there?

Anyway,  there then followed a rare, whipped strike from Amelia Mulvaney  and a tap in from Josh ‘Miroslav’ Dance to complete his hat-trick before Connor Mulvaney concluded proceedings with a venomous shot which clattered in off the underside of the bar, leaving the Wokingham faithful to file out with a jubilant version of ‘King of the Road’ and hopefully no illusions about the season ahead.