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.

 

If you were born in Liberia and grew up in the Netherlands, you wouldn’t necessarily expect to play for Pittsburgh Riverhounds, Fulham and Barnet, interspersed with spells in the Persian Pro League, Azerbaijan Premier League and the Polish second division.

Similarly, if you grew up firing on all cylinders for Manchester United Academy, you wouldn’t necessarily expect to be farmed out to Inverness Caledonian Thistle before finding yourself appearing for Weston Super Mare against Portishead Town on a rainy night in February, competing for a place in the next round of the Somerset Premier Cup. It does make you wonder: why are we here? Why?

Woodley United Spitfires are sponsored by KJ Smith, a local firm of solicitors who factor the rights of grandparents into traditional divorce proceedings and cohabitation disputes. In keeping with their sponsors, they played in a style which thrived on conflict. It would be tedious to itemise all the fouls and consequent free-kicks, but there were so many that we actually found them strangely disarming. There were no strategic fouls, committed at just the right moment to thwart our progress. This was foul play as a way of life. It was a high studded mode of being, and as such it was more of a catalyst to us  than them; their play was too transgressive for its own good.

Evan was felled three times, but with a gradual element as if he was an aged Sequoia in a storm. Had Wokingham worked them out? Some of the plunges were at least anticipated, if not theatrical. When Woodley won a free-kick of their own, it was enough to catapult us into new dimensions of cluelessness, to the extent that we made a defensive wall in their half of the pitch. Coach Peter – in perpetual defence of creativity – just rolled with it, with no more than a wry smile by way of reaction.

In between the violence, some goals were scored. The first, reassuringly, was made up of Wokingham’s chief footballing alloy: incompetence and cluelessness. The ball rolled and ricocheted at about 2mph, with no one disrupting its passage into the net. Our two goals in the first half were fantastic, fired into the top of the net by Xanthoulis and Mulvaney respectively. In the second half, when we weren’t rolling about on the deck, the attacking momentum persisted with Evan delivering the ball excellently into the path of Jack Parry for a simple finish and Josh Dance completing a typically winding run by despatching the ball home in style.

‘I haven’t laughed as much as that in a long time’ said Josh’s dad. But why? All the little Chopper Harrises and Vinnie Joneses flying about, I guess – the sheer pointlessness of it all, allied to some sobering stats and ideas: W3 D1 L1 GD -11. Top of the league?

If you were born in Liberia and grew up in the Netherlands, you wouldn’t necessarily expect to play for Pittsburgh Riverhounds, Fulham and Barnet, interspersed with spells in the Persian Pro League, Azerbaijan Premier League and the Polish second division.

Similarly, if you grew up firing on all cylinders for Manchester United Academy, you wouldn’t necessarily expect to be farmed out to Inverness Caledonian Thistle before finding yourself appearing for Weston Super Mare against Portishead Town on a rainy night in February, competing for a place in the next round of the Somerset Premier Cup. It does make you wonder: why are we here? Why?

Woodley United Spitfires are sponsored by KJ Smith, a local firm of solicitors who factor the rights of grandparents into traditional divorce proceedings. In keeping with their sponsors, they played in a style which thrived on conflict. It would be tedious to itemise all the fouls and consequent free-kicks, but there were so many that we actually found them strangely disarming. There were no strategic fouls, committed at just the right moment to thwart our progress. This was foul play as a way of life. It was a high studded mode of being, and as such it was a catalyst to us rather than them; their play was too transgressive for its own good.

Evan was felled three times, but with a gradual element as if he was an aged Sequoia in a storm. Had Wokingham worked them out? Some of the plunges were at least anticipated, if not theatrical. When Woodley won a free-kick of their own, it was enough to catapult us into new dimensions of cluelessness, to the extent that we made a defensive wall in their half of the pitch. Coach Peter – in perpetual defence of creativity – just rolled with it, with no more than a wry smile by way of reaction.

In between the violence, some goals were scored. The first, reassuringly, was made up of Wokingham’s chief footballing alloy: incompetence and cluelessness. The ball rolled and ricocheted at about 2mph, with no one disrupting its passage into the net. Our two goals in the first half were fantastic, fired into the top of the net by Xanthoulis and Mulvaney respectively. In the second half, when we weren’t rolling about on the deck, the attacking momentum persisted with Evan delivering the ball excellently into the path of Jack Parry for a simple finish and Josh Dance completing a typically winding run by despatching the ball home in style.

‘I haven’t laughed as much as that in a long time’ said Josh’s dad. But why? All the little Chopper Harrises and Vinnie Joneses flying about, I guess – the sheer pointlessness of it all.

 

 

 

You can’t accuse our coaches of failing to innovate. They will take a defeat on the chin and, rather than railing against the elements or tearing strips off the players, calmly retreat to think through what happened, why and how we can change.

Paul is currently doing a course called ‘Creativity in Football’ so it was perhaps no surprise when before the game he gathered the players into a tight circle to pour over what I can only describe as ‘Rothko Charts’, blocks of colour denoting sections of the pitch to indicate where players should be during various phases of the game.

It seemed to tap into the mathematical sides of their brains, a little puzzle they engaged in with relish. I wasn’t entirely sure what the strips and cubes meant, but hands were shooting up in abundance.

The first game of the Summer League, as some may remember, was disastrous so we had to go back to the drawing board. Since that game, the team have played in a Christmas Tree formation, heavier at the base (defence) and lighter in attack, winning twice and drawing once.

One of the main tenets of the ‘Creativity in Football’ course is to limit the information given to children, so as not to ‘coach them out’ of their instincts. I suppose the information you do give, therefore, has to be good. The Rothko colours seemed to remind them of the idea of playing in a pattern.

The grass pitch they played on seemed to be suffering slightly from the effects of the weather, lack of gardening and too many dogs. Long grass in the corners held the ball up, creating a more fluent game on the one hand, as the ball was in play more, and a sense of rugby scrums and rolling mauls on the other as players sought to move the ball forward.

We laid seige to their goal with several near misses before Caversham scored with their first shot, against the run of play. ‘Keep up the pressure!’ yelled one of their dads. I couldn’t (or just didn’t) resist firing back ‘What pressure? That was your first shot!’

Wokingham went back on the offensive and won a free kick soon after, which Evan lined up to take from a narrow angle at the edge of the box. I knew he could score from that position, but superstition held me back from filming. I just felt that if I filmed it, he would miss. He curled it into the top corner before we added a further two goals with excellent finishes from lone striker Joel Davis, the angel at the top of the Christmas tree.

Controversy followed when Davis cut through the defence again and hammered the ball into the net. It also caught the underside of the crossbar and the ref felt that it hadn’t crossed the line: part of the net behind the goal is tight to the bar, meaning the ball could hit the net behind the bar at high velocity but still not technically cross the line. That’s why all goal nets at professional grounds are uniform now; the ball sails into the net without impediment.

Crossing lines. For some reason (perhaps due to having crossed Sonning Bridge perhaps over 1000 times), I always visualise the Caversham parents’ journeys to the game. Did they choose Reading, Caversham or Sonning Bridge? Taking it a stage further, I think about a reported scuffle on Caversham Bridge in 1643 between the Royalists from north of the river and the Parliamentarians from the south. In my mind, us folk from the nondescript tyre outlets and roadside garages of Emmbrook are still the Republicans against the Royalists from the herb gardens and tree lined parks of Caversham. Ridiculous, I know. It’s a match between complementary sets of 8-year-olds, united among the grills and gravestones of East Reading.

Usually, when there’s a moment of perceived injustice in the game, there’s also a sinking feeling and a question: ‘Will we have to pay for that?’ It looked as though we would. By half-time, it was 3-3 and early in the second half the perceived Royalists added another.

What followed was perhaps the best goal I’ve witnessed in person.  Before you say ‘So?’ (in the knowledge I’m a Fulham fan), please bear in mind that I’ve seen Pajtim Kasami score at Crystal Palace. And before you laugh, please note that his goal was nominated for a Ballon d’Or, meaning it was regarded as one of the top twenty goals in the whole of Europe that year. It’s hard to describe Callum’s (Connor’s) goal, except to resort to cliches like ‘mazy dribble’, ‘defies logic’ or ‘Messi style.’ He just ran around everyone, with incredible skill, and at the point at which you expect to say ‘Well he did the hard bit’, he slotted it home with class.

Despite that, the game seemed to be going in Caversham’s favour. Is this anything to do with the fact that they’re based at Mapledurham playing fields, 92 metres above sea level, and therefore have better lung capacities than those of us battling asthma down by the M4? Probably not, though buffer zones of greenery are probably more valuable to them than us. Callum constantly read the game like a master, determinedly tracking back to defend before rampaging forward to create play down the left. At 5-4 down, he squared the ball to Evan who picked his spot and hit the ball high into the goal to level the scores again.

The final passage of the game could not have felt more fitting. Again, we were caught out at the back. Questions have to be asked, no doubt, but with the score at 6-6 with a minute left, Davis – cruelly denied earlier – was put through to a one-on-one with the keeper and calmly completed his hat-trick.

A pitch invasion in Reading – of a better sort to that witnessed on Tuesday night – followed the final whistle. The coaches’ adaptability and creativity was vindicated and reflected back on the players as they gathered again in a close knit group with fists crossing, the elastic of the ‘Player of the Match’ wristband stretching to surround them all.

 

 

 

‘He has the bonhomie of a gameshow host and his handshake is so limp it’s like meeting a ghost. He lies through his teeth with impeccable grammar; in the game of life he’s just a dreadful goalhanger.’ One of Billy Bragg’s rare forays into football imagery sums up the divide between those who play for themselves and those who play for the team. He’s brings a dull point to life, that’s for sure – as did the players of Wokingham & Emmbrook Oranges today.

This training match, with no common enemy, had the potential sourness factor of a Tangfastic. The tension was palpable. Why is that? Infractions included: hitting the goalkeeper after a soft goal was conceded, a lunge at an opponent which Jonathan Edwards would’ve considered promising, disruptive crying, and apologies which were about as natural as a forced simile.

Where did all the angst come from? Do children carry baggage from the past, as adults do? Back to Billy: ‘He was trapped in a haircut he no longer believed in. She said “I’m a teacher here; I teach the children.”‘ Is the implication here that the vitality of the children brought the teacher into the present moment, whereas the man – as indicated by a Top Gun flattop or something – just couldn’t get there? Or is being ‘in the moment’ actually a major problem for children, and therefore overrated?

Whatever the reason for the turmoil, they would rather lose against strangers than against each other, despite some excellent goals, good play from most players and nothing riding on the result. In terms of the adult haircut dilemma, some thoughts from Stephen Malkmus:  “And in a funny way, the shaving of my, uh, head has been a liberation from, uh, a lot of, uh, stupid vanities really. Uh, it has simplified everything for me. It has opened a lot of doors, maybe.”

 

The team are still trying to acclimatise to new, larger pitches which are in a sort of urban boondock between Wokingham Road and an indefinable building you could probably pop into for a bit of psychobabble or group therapy.

We had a wander around the building to locate some facilities, but even the steward directing us had no idea as to what it’s actually for. It has the clinical atmosphere of a hospital, but without any attempts to throw sterility into relief with the presence of an overpriced M&S outlet or an AMT.  Instead, it contains bewildering signs: ‘Intermediate Development Pathway Room’, ‘Dissociative Conversion Studio’, ‘Autologous Salvage Area.’

Instead of incremental progress, our coaches opted for a complete overhaul of formation and tactics after last week’s fiasco against Caversham Trents. Training almost contained Felix Magath levels of direct intervention, albeit without the application of cottage cheese to sore limbs.

Free flowing attacking football was to be sacrificed in favour of a Christmas Tree formation. Further research reveals that coaches Martyn and Paul had instigated Karl Rappan’s Verrou, an early form of Catenaccio, the ‘door bolt’, a defensive tactic which employs a free roaming defender to troubleshoot across the back line and initiate counter attacks. For most of the game, this role was the domain of top goalscorer and heartbeat of the team Callum Mulcahey, who also doubled up energetically as a mezzala (box-to-box midfielder.)

Evan played as a terzino fluidificante, or ‘wing back’, tackling and intercepting well before making probing runs down the wing; he also went close with two free-kicks, one of which hit the bar and one of which was saved to the keeper’s left. Kelly Bond played as an effective mediano, while Annabel Mulcahey was the left-sided fluidificante who also offered bullet throw-ins reminiscent of Rory Delap rather than the misdirected loops of other teammates. Mario Selley was brilliant as a seconda punta fantasista, making purposeful runs into the box to anticipate passes from either Mulcahey or Thanos Xenakis, a marcatore puro who roots out problems in the midfield with the vigilance of a sniffer dog at Schiphol airport.

As for Barton Rovers, quite who they were or where they came from was a mystery. Apparently they were Luton & District League Division Three champions in the 1947/48 season and won the South Midlands Floodlit Cup in 1989, but surely this was a different Barton Rovers? The first guy I asked seemed to have come down from the north to watch his nephew, and didn’t have much idea about the team. His brother, the boy’s father, was friendly enough but couldn’t offer much more than ‘they are a long established club.’

Whoever they are, a 5-0 win following a swiftly implemented tactical revolution showed fantastic versatility from the players. Is talk of a Summer League title challenge still slightly premature? Possibly, though I’m just about ready to admit last week’s score by revealing that after two games our goal difference is -15.

After a barren run which is now officially longer than The Grateful Dead’s encore on New Year’s Eve 1978, we lined up against Reeves Rangers, under a punishing sun, for our final game in Woodley.

‘I HATE this team’ reflected Jack’s dad, a mild mannered vegan from the Black Country. My thoughts were not dissimilar, but your perspective will depend on what you think of ‘anti-football.’ Is there a style of play which, though within the rules, is worthy of condemnation?

Thinking back to ‘Crazy Gang’ era Wimbledon, I remember admiring how a small club from South London could rise from non-league to topple one of the best Liverpool sides ever and win the FA Cup.

When you look into their story more closely, however, you realise the extent to which their success depended not merely on a liberal interpretation of the rules, but on a none-too-inconspicuous degree of criminality.

The dressing room culture was designed to eliminate any trace of weakness. John Scales’ car was torched as a ‘prank’; as a semi-reasonable human being, he didn’t quite cut the mustard in the eyes of Wally Downes, Vinnie Jones and John Fashanu, whose wrong sides could take you down avenues from which you would struggle to emerge.

When the ball’s in the air, the contest is physical – a fight to see who can gain control of it as it drops. If you’re willing to punch, elbow, bollock tug…you’ll get it. Reeves Rangers made the ball into an Alpine Accentor (a bird rather than a dodgy computer or model of Honda, believe it or not), propelling it so high it appeared to merge into a cumulonimbus backdrop, only then to drop in time for a striker to steer it home from the ‘mixer’.

It’s hard to play football when the ball’s twenty feet above your head – it’s obvious that you have to play the man rather than the ball. For Wokingham to adapt their tactics to do this, though, would be nigh on impossible. At the best of times, calling to the players is tantamount to trying to whistle a fling of whimbrel in from the sea. The sound gets lost and even if it didn’t, it would be filtered through an 8-year-old’s brain to basically mean the square root of f’ all.

Reeves won with time to spare, despite a footballing fightback from Wokingham which brought the score back to 3-2 and led to dominance of possession in the second half, a futile stat when faced with the ultimate short-termism of the long ball.

Anyway, as a post-season reflection on his teammates, I decided to deliver Evan the exact questions put to Ryan Sessegnon in the Fulham v Ipswich Town programme this week:

Q.) Who would you least like to fight with?

Evan: Josh because his dad’s very tough.

Q.) You have £100. Who would you buy a present for?

Evan: I’d buy Connor some trainers because he wears rusty Tiempos at the moment.

Q.) Who’s your best mate at Wokingham & Emmbrook?

Evan: Mark because we grew up at nursery together.

Q.) Who’s the teacher’s pet?

Evan: Me because our coaches are better than the other teams’ coaches. All they do is get their teams to boot it, but our coaches teach us to do skills and not boot it.

Q.) Who has the worst haircut?

Evan: Can I base that on a player who isn’t in our team? Balotelli.

Q.) Which player is management material?

Evan: Um, I think Mark because he knows what to do but never actually does it.

Q.) Who would be most annoying to be stuck in a lift with?

Evan: Ciara because she’d be chasing me around the place.

Q.) Which player is the vainest?

Evan: Me because I love to see what I look like and if I look bad or not.

Q.) Who’s the easiest to wind up?

Evan: Ciara. Every time I disagree with her she cries.

Q.) Who would you ask for help in a quiz?

Evan: Amelia because she knows almost everything. If it was a maths quiz I’d pick Jack because his dad’s a Maths teacher.

Q.) What’s your favourite memory of this season?

Evan: Scoring the first goal of this season and the season before.

Q.) What are the team’s aims for next season when it’s 7-a-side?

Evan: This is a target for the coaches: stick the players in the positions they want to play in or are best at.