Wilderspool Causeway

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.

 

 

As we assembled for the anthem ceremony, it seemed as though something was rotten in the state of Tilehurst. For a start, only three of the West Reading outfit had choreographed their mornings with a view to starting a football match at 11:30. Of those who were present, two were either generally insane or had taken a polystyrene bodyboard – emotionally speaking – to surf the Pipeline of youth football. One lad was on the floor in tears and one was in need of a touchline courage transfusion to walk the final desperate yards to the pitch.

When I say ‘anthem ceremony’, that’s what I think would be an appropriate assertion of identity prior to kick-off. We could belt out Men of Trowbridge: ‘Loud the martial pipes are sounding/ Every manly heart is bounding/ As our trusted chief surrounding/ March we Trowbridge men. See they’re in disorder/ Comrades, keep close order/ Ever shall they rue the day/ They ventured o’er the Wiltshire border.’

Wokingham cognoscenti will know that Cross Street, outside The Ship, used to mark an unlikely border between Berkshire and Wiltshire. Perhaps Centre Skills would opt for an East 17 classic: ‘Good times we had return to haunt me/ Though it’s for you, all that I do seems to go wrong. STAY NOW! Baby if you’ve got to go away, don’t think I can take the pain, won’t you stay another day?’

When the ref, with West Coast nonchalance, lackadaisically brought the whistle to his lips to start the game, Tilehurst had somehow scrambled a team together which would soon be joined by a sub – young Bernard – who would make a strong impression on the second half.

Unfortunately for Tilehurst, Connor defied precedent by firing us into an early lead, sending their keeper into a bawling heap at the edge of the box and their manager, yet again, into his store of emotional sticking plasters.

After 10 minutes, with Evan in the Pirlo role, Josh tearing around the pitch to win tackles and Connor finishing in style, we were 3-1 up. In most games, that would be ‘job done’, but to say our defence is like a sieve would be an insult to the kitchen implement which at least retains something of worth and energy as it conducts its business.

In the second half, with ‘Dribble, Bernard!’ the mantra from the Tilehurst bench, Wokingham capitulated like an aunt among Parma Violets while Centre Skills, with increasing emotional fortitude, began to flourish in Bernard’s mazy slipstream.

The River Trent, the ‘mere of England that divides the north part from the south’, is a major river, ‘smug and silver’, running through arguably the most important place in the British Isles: Burton-on-Trent. The Emm Brook, by contrast, is a lethargic tributary of the Loddon, idling alongside the motorway with intensive behaviour support from Thames Water and council drainage manager Eddie Napper.

Given the gulf in class between the two water courses, I’m sure you’ll agree that the scale of defeat was commendably marginal. They are from the big leagues; we’re a tributary of a tributary.

As the morning progressed, the prospect of witnessing a Wokingham & Emmbrook win receded into the hazy distance. In fact, it had begun to seem impossible. Admittedly, the primary reason for this was that at the time of kick-off I was halfway to Ginster territory, cruising through Wiltshire on the westbound carriageway of the M4 to play for a place in the final of the FA People’s Cup.

Back in Woodley, Wokingham & Emmbrook started with footballing abandon, playing a high pressing game of power and panache, undermined on 6 minutes by the Royals’ number 24, bespectacled Charlie.

Two minutes later, Connor ripped apart the right flank with a truly damaging run before scoring a fortuitous equaliser on 11 minutes. Josh, playing like a goaded beast of the field, saw a shoe fly off as he hit the ball with extramundane venom, compromising health and safety protocol as he sent us into the break with a narrow lead.

Caversham approached the second half as if Neil Warnock had destroyed their changing room and sent them out with one last chance of a contract: one last chance at life. They powered forward as if the Trent had been re-routed through a tributary of the Thames, breaching our defences soon after the whistle with a goal, the nature of which I do not know.

Such was the relentless Caversham pressure, they soon scored again but it should be noted that the ref seemed to be in flagrant dereliction of duty as he neglected to force the Caversham players to retreat to the halfway line for our goal kicks.

The irrepressible Connor Mulvaney and co. wouldn’t capitulate to Caversham without a fight and drove forward with Evan in attendance, scoring to reduce the deficit to a single goal before Evan’s late attempt at an equaliser was saved by a goalkeeper of unknown appearance.

This was a great performance from the chaps and chapettes against one of the strongest footballing tides in the affairs of men, representing a fitting prelude to (the outrageously good) Mulvaney senior firing Wokingham District to the final of the FA People’s Cup on April 3oth.

 

P.S. When I asked Evan if he’d rather I watch his game or play football in Bristol, he said “Please play, dad. Then you won’t have to write one of those report things” (this was more about perceived Wifi/computer access issues than fear of the limelight, though.)

 

With thanks to Caroline Saynor and Andrew Parry

 

‘David Fairclough never cried.’ Coach Michael’s closing rebuke, buried in Scouse folklore, was probably designed to fall on deaf ears. A true estimation of the footballing and emotional weaknesses on display today would have been too much to bear, like looking into the face of God is supposed to be.

Previous encounters with Caversham have generally been more favourable (even including our best ever result: an 11-0 win in which Evan scored a hat-trick), but today Wokingham & Emmbrook went to pieces in such style that the main parental and coaching objective was to spot who was next for the emotional quicksand. Three players dissolved into tears mid-game, one of whom resisted substitution with the determination of Swampy holding out against the Newbury bypass, face contorted against change.

Perhaps this reflected Wokingham’s outlook in general: meandering and philosophical. Driving down Miles Road before the game, I mentioned that on Wednesday I ran along it as part of a strange Woodley loop which ended in horrible stomach cramps: “What were you running from?”, asked Evan. Nothing,  I replied (though that wasn’t entirely true – I had spotted a former colleague pulling into the Loddon Vale Tesco Extra car park I started from).”OK. Were you running from or to something?” Neither. But did he have a point somewhere, albeit unwittingly?

Though it wasn’t evident on the pitch,  Caversham had their own crisis to contend with before choosing their Saturday bridge over the Thames, probably opting for the big boy: Caversham Bridge itself. In midweek, their best player thumped a teammate in the face and was therefore suspended for today’s action. Their moment of catharsis was in the past, now, and seemed to have been distilled into a sense of common purpose characterised by ruthless and fluent football.

After the game, as already noted, the coaches couldn’t quite approach today’s play head on, and nor can I. Instead, they ranged across the years for useful analogies. We needed to be more like Wimbledon in 1988. We needed to be more stoical, like David Fairclough. We needed to remember Pat Van Den Hauwe (in my opinion) – he didn’t cry either and to this day he takes care of Everton’s walking footballers, holding his head high in the launderettes and bakeries of Bootle after leaving the questionable dealings and unfortunate diseases of the murky underworld behind him to embrace a new future thanks to the support of visionary Toffee Denise Barrett-Baxendale.

We might as well let it out; turn the experience into a watershed, catharsis, wholesale renunciation of football. Perhaps the only way to rebuild is to truly collapse, to lose your way completely in the cul-de-sacs of Reading’s south-of-the-river suburbs, succumbing to at least two of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, kites and blossom notwithstanding.

 

Post-script: an extra training session was called today near Marjorie’s tree, Cantley Park – Aslan is on the move.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Orchard tractors and rotary tillers rumbled down the A33 from old water meadows and Osier beds low in the valley of the Kennet, signalling a suspension of agrarian practices for the people of Burghfield as they prepared for a morning meeting with Wokingham & Emmbrook on neutral territory.

Phlegmatic. Standoffish. Emotionally unavailable. The Burghfield manager seemed destined to connect with us only on a superficial, ‘footballing’ level. What makes him tick as a person and the currents which brought him to where he is today would remain largely unknown, buried beneath West Country dialect.

What he did bring with him, though, was a sense of the vast open spaces of Wessex, suggesting an affinity with the Magnas, Abbases and Regises to the west of the county rather than the Homebases, Kwikfits and Lidls of the middle.

Burghfielders circumvent the urban, where possible, with rare trips to Reading following the path of the Holy Brook rather than the becalmed traffic of the A329. It was little surprise, then, to hear the Prime Villager enjoin our manager to embrace the Baltic expanses of the 7-a-side pitch at the far end of the Bulmershe: “Alright me babber? We don’t want to be on no small pitches today mate, right? All that bloody narration from that spanner from the league about what pitch we’re on’s proper done me ‘ead in mate. And it’s a quick handshake ahfter as I’m off to Banjo Island to see the Gas.”

West Country riddles aside, we wandered towards Russia in the hope of transcending the frigid tactical landscape of last week’s 2-2 draw with Wokingham & Emmbrook Rangers, a game in which both sides stumbled on the foothills of their hopes, failing to inhabit the enlarged dimensions of the pitch with sufficient authority to signal much evolution in footballing style.

This week, the auguries were better. Our defence, usually about as safe as a Mongolian mineshaft, lined up 3 strong for a change and failed to concede until the 19th minute, a fact which Connor Mulvaney seemed to interpret as a personal slight before descending on Burghfield like the Mistral sweeping down from the Ardeche off the Vivarais Marsh, hammering home an equaliser on the stroke of half-time.

In the second half, Evan played up front and with the score at 1-1 latched on to a Mulvaney through ball before angling a left-footed strike across the goal and agonisingly wide. He later capitalised on slack defensive work to create a goal for Connor and engaged in a slick one-two with Jack Parry which earned both players a share of the post-match awards, all of which, frankly, was scant recompense for a moment in the game which divided onlookers and put the match beyond Wokingham’s reach.

Before Euro ’96, pitches had character, part of which derived from the unique goalposts and nets which existed at every ground. Stamford Bridge, Wembley and Craven Cottage housed my favourite posts, with ricochets off the nets and stanchions enhancing the character and feel of each goal scored. There were times when the ball would nestle in the corner gently, bounce dramatically back out off a stanchion or barely reach the net at all. Now, the nets are supported by external posts to minimise the ball’s movement once a goal is scored. How many iconic Wembley goals (or Wembley goals at all), can you remember post ’96? Does this have anything to do with the generic nets? I think so.

With the score poised delicately at 2-1 to Burghfield, one of the villagers saw the ball drop on the halfway line and executed what I can only describe as a ‘venomous lob’ towards our goal. The ball bounced and rose towards the crossbar, hitting (impossible in today’s uniform goals) a mixture of net and bar. The Burghfielders immediately went into raptures, creating scenes of jubilation around the scorer of the ‘goal’. The ref paused for a moment, surveyed the unbridled joy and, without the benefit of technology, awarded a goal.

It would be churlish to deny the lad his moment in the sun, I admit, and the characterful goal nets had done their work, sending the villagers back to The Teg with three points and some stories to tell in Great Auclum’s dark country lanes.

For us, the future’s different; hopefully, we’ll follow the wisdom of Slavisa Jokanovic: ‘We keep possession for to create goals.’ Simple game, really.