‘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.

When we arrived for the pre-season tournament at Chestnut Park, not a soul was to be seen. People later mentioned faltering Sat Navs, with someone having been led to Sindlesham, another to Bracknell and another to a state of isolation laced with profanities at the Peugeot garage on Molly Millar’s Lane.

The problem for us, on the Saturday we arrived, is that the mini tournament was not scheduled to occur until the following day. This was a shame, as our pre-match preparation was absolutely spot on. Evan had successfully put his socks and shin pads on within half an hour of being asked. I even had breakfast waiting for him as he came down the stairs; I had successfully descended the stairs myself, having fallen down them the night before (leading to ‘policeman’s heel’ and a pulled calf). Inhaler puffs were taken at the optimum time before performance. Hydration and snacks were taken care of, and a calm atmosphere of joyful anticipation was created to calm Evan’s onions before the first non-existent game of the day and a consolatory round of mini golf at Jock’s Lane.

In contrast, preparation for the actual ‘Tournoi de Wokingham’ – on Sunday August 20th rather than Saturday August 19th – could not conceivably have been worse. At approximately 23:30 the night before, Evan was atop Josh Newport’s shoulders, belting out the ‘DER DE DER DE’ part of Paul Simon’s ‘You Can Call Me Al’ on a fully thronged dance floor  at Lewis and Georgie’s wedding reception. Running around like a maniac in Sunningdale as the day changes – life at its finest, but no way to gather energy. All of this is by way of explaining why the dew soaked ground was trodden in such strange ways the following morning.

 

Wokingham Rangers 2  Wokingham & Emmbrook Oranges 0

During the wedding service, Evan turned to me and said ‘Do we have to do this first?’ By ‘first’, he was referring to the hoops to jump through before the reception. The ceremony was nothing more than a sacramental bridge to the disco. There was little genuine understanding, perhaps, of the idea of blessing a sacred union. ‘I’ve got a new uncle now’ was his sadly misguided interpretation. The following morning, the game started but Evan didn’t. Or he did, but with nowhere near the force and influence he’s capable of exerting. ‘Are you tired, Evan?’ asked Coach Peter. I can’t remember him ever having admitted to being tired – he just passes out when necessary. Yes, he replied. ‘Do you want to be substituted, Evan?’ That too.                                                                                                                                                                                   ‘

So after a couple of elegant tiki taka style passes, he was off. The rest of the team did quite well on the whole, but succumbed to two identical defensive errors by a space cadet who will remain unnamed if not undescribed. The whole game was a lackadaisical, self-limiting exercise in pointless nonchalance.

Wokingham Sumas 4 Wokingham & Emmbrook Oranges 1 (Mulvaney)

This was a game which resulted in a deceptive scoreline; we were level pegging for much of the game, with Evan coming close to putting us ahead with a volley from a corner (just over the bar) and Connor tearing around to good effect despite a lack of immunity to the rustiness affecting them all. We also had a new player whose dad – 6 foot 10 veteran of the Molly Millar’s Sat Nav debacle and profanities attendant thereof – must have wondered quite what the point of living was as the Oranges struggled for the faintest sense of rhythm or cohesion despite occasional suggestions of quality.

As well as helping Hayden to settle, we were missing Xanthoulis to a holiday in Greece, a terrier on the pitch whose questionable attitude’s double edged: his complete disregard for teammates extends to the opposition, for whom a special contempt is reserved. We sorely missed his wanton madness and were left only to loosely canonise him as a loose cannon, as it were, in his absence.

Ultimately, the flock were condemned to retreat to higher ground, ‘flood waters rising and Canaan bound.’ Not an ideal pre-season, but ‘c’est la vie’ as my Physics teacher Malcolm Surridge would say in his odd, deep nasal Welsh tones.

 

At Jock’s Lane, after Saturday’s non-existent tournament and prior to Sunday’s actual, badly prepared for one.

 

Twyford Comets 4 Wokingham & Emmbrook 0

The general synopsis at midday: hot. ‘Mercury is rising still – turn the fan on high…After wine and nectarines the fireflies in time move like syrup through the evening.’ Too hot for football, for sure, but tournaments are in the summer and teams enter, so there we were. First up were bad omens from Twyford. Perhaps they were buoyed by the recent example of local taliswoman Theresa May as she romped home by a margin of 26,000 votes in the recent election. Anyway, Twyford, beginning strong, prodded and probed down the left while we were variable, becoming poor at times, decreasing 4.

Eldon Celtic 2 Wokingham & Emmbrook 0

Just when we thought it couldn’t get any worse, out stepped Eldon Celtic, a feeder club for Reading FC Academy. They were head and shoulders above us, and their knees and toes were quicker too. To add insult to injury, I’m pretty sure the hefty central midfielder’s voice had broken. It was certainly too deep for comfort. According to Evan, ‘When we hurt them they had bad reactions, but they had beautiful shots. They didn’t just smash it – they placed it.’ We were in a dodgy weather window, but the soccer winds were veering.

AFC Caversham 0 Wokingham and Emmbrook 1 (Saynor)

Hopes of reaching the quarter final were falling rather quickly, with chances of progression locally poor. Visibility of the trophy was non-existent, but then came Caversham and a  revelation from the upper echelons of the league hierarchy that there are no harder teams in Berkshire than Eldon Celtic. AFC Caversham are a team which conjure only positive thoughts, in the cherry red of AFC Bournemouth, cheered on by a friendly and forward thinking group of philosophers from north of the river. The one thing I remember about the game was obviously its outstanding moment: ‘Someone passed to me down the line and I dribbled it then took a shot.’ He floated it into the top corner. Sea state moderate.

Reeves Rangers 0 Wokingham & Emmbrook 1 (Dance)

‘In the patent courts of nature all is but a vanity, and the metronome that defeats you is the monochrome that you see.’ No chance of that here, with our nemeses from Reeves Rangers decked out in revolting blue and white hoops, while we sported our usual vivid orange. The general situation was of increasingly high pressure, with visibility of the quarter finals improving slowly. In more than ten games against Reeves Rangers, we had failed to register a win, with a combination of shameless long ball tactics and an outstanding player or two reducing our passing football to the margins of relevance. This time, though, we were locally rough. In Evan’s words: ‘I fouled two people and the ref was awful. They played better but we still won. And their goalie was a bit – you know – big.’  Visibility: moderate to good, occasionally poor. We would have to beat club rivals Wokingham & Emmbrook Tigers to progress to the quarter final.

Wokingham & Emmbrook Tigers 0 Wokingham & Emmbrook Oranges 2 (Dance 2)

‘My friends were there. They thought they would win, but they didn’t. Eddie said “We’re going to thrash you”, but they didn’t.’  So there.

Despite an inauspicious start to the day, there was considerable change in wind direction across the path of the depression, becoming cyclonic. We were through to the knock-outs and, unfortunately, a case of catastrophic sun management. Between the games, it had been hard to keep the players hydrated and settled. Instead, they ran about with their tops off, plastered in Factor 50, kicking balls, climbing fences, eating sweets and running off with the Twyford lads through fields of wheat.

QF Rotherfield United 2 Wokingham & Emmbrook 0

When the quarter final finally arrived, progress to the pitch was glacial. They had to re-dress before redressing the footballing balance of the day. When Evan eventually got to the pitch, he looked  pained and off colour: ‘I don’t want to play. I can’t play.’ Unfortunately, we had no subs; they had been out in the punishing sun for four hours by this point and there was little we could do to set the mental, physical or tactical cogs in motion. It had ‘all gone to flitter shitter’, as they say in Northamptonshire. With the sea state rough again, we faced a Rotherfield team who, according to Evan ‘had very good tactics like as soon as they got the ball, they passed, ran into space, looked for space, passed the ball into space, then they shot and scored.’ Maybe Rotherfield were always in space because we could no longer move, but never mind: it had taken a heroic effort from the players not to collapse under the weight of the earlier defeats.

Unfortunately, though, we were soon to face the indignity of a major booking error, a second consecutive tournament in 30 degree heat. I can’t face getting the forensics out for that one; the brief summary of results below might explain why.

CSA ’07 Hawks 1 – 0 Wokingham & Emmbrook   Winnersh Rangers Barbarians 2 – 0 Wokingham & Emmbrook   Caversham Trents Royals 4 – 0 Wokingham & Emmbrook  Esher Wizards Whites 3 – 0 Wokingham & Emmbrook  Pirbright Premier Dragons 0 – 0 Wokingham & Emmbrook 

 

“Dad, do I have any peculiararities?” Note the elision of ‘peculiar’ and ‘rare.’ At this point, I could mention the beer distribution racket he set up at Morten’s birthday party, wandering around with a fishing net and charging £1 to fetch cans of Kronenburg from the paddling pool while the in(or reluctant-to-be)capacitated from London blissed out in the shade. Or I could mention some surprising tendencies: cueing up Frank Sinatra on Spotify and singing along to ‘My Way’, for example. Unpredictability is a virtue of the lad, as is his encyclopaedic memory – a blessing and a worry.

On the football field, being hard to read is a blessing, an advantage he exercised when bursting through the Tilehurst midfield, cutting inside and laying the ball through for a goal – at times he’s been designated a candidate for a change of pace: capable of every skill, but not always of the tempo adjustment to make them truly count.

In this game, we got off to an absolute flying, rip-roaring start with Josh Dance tearing through the middle of the pitch to bear down on goal before despatching a shot decisively into the corner of the net. Andrew Parry – Emmbrook Maths wizard – and I assumed managerial duties in the absence of the usual coaches who were at an important family wedding in the north country.

So far, so good, but the little scamps from Centre Skills changed up their tactics in such a radical manner that we were left crudely undermined, mere shadows of our former competent selves. Almost as soon as we crossed the goalscoring frontier, they reassessed their priorities and seemed to alight on brute pragmatism as a useful platform for success, sending balls soaring into the Reading stratosphere before they plummeted beyond the ken of our unwitting defence for a prowling Centre Skills attacker to knock seamlessly into the net.

This pattern repeated itself several times, despite the aforementioned consolatory efforts of Evan and co., leaving the temporary management crew bewildered and denuded of practicable ideas: you can’t ask 8-year-olds to head the ball back into space, and nor can you ask them to ‘read the bounce’, an advanced skill known to scholars of AFC Wimbledon and other professional clubs, but certainly not to the average volk. All we could do was scrabble about among the crumpled spreadsheets and hope for the best, before accepting it wouldn’t arrive and heading back to Emmbrook for a Beck’s and a flavoured Volvic.