Wilderspool Causeway

Managers go: migrate with phantoms
of the present on staircases in frames.
Who stops on the turn and sees the lifting?
Silverware and crow’s feet.

People come and go. Hotel rooms,
breakfast, silence in the lift.
Just standing. Black and white pictures,
complicated meanings. We stood

and looked, tried to prise a story
from the image, but couldn’t stand
for long enough to be the true eccentric.
Too self-conscious to go to ground

and lie on that great underlay
while guests pass, up and down,
and we watch. Just biographer-

Clough on paper, Shankly writing
with kindness to strangers. Truth
and fiction in the pictures.

In possibly the shortest short-term loan in the history of football (10 minutes), Evan began today’s game in the light orange of Tilehurst. I call him Evan, anyway.

His new coaches wouldn’t budge from their own interpretation: ‘Play out wide, Kevin. Get wider – really wide. No, even wider. Right out on the touchline. Good skills! Great goal, Kevin: well done!’ With his third or fourth touch of the game, Evan delivered the unthinkable by tackling Jack, sidestepping Thanasie and scoring against his own club. As an assistant Wokingham coach, I could neither celebrate nor quite conceal my admiration.

“We’ll have him back now”, shouted Peter.

“We could keep him if you like? We’ll put him on the bench?”

“No, we’ll have him back.”

Loan over. Evan’s face was a picture of bewilderment as he went first to Wokingham’s bench, then on to the pitch to replace an injured player and then in goal – all in one half of the game.

A commentator summarising Evan’s involvement in the game would surely not have been any more coherent than Harry Enfield’s Les the Barman and his demented revisionist horse racing commentary: ‘That’s my wife, horse, Red Rum, Maureen, Misty Buff, Mint Sunrise…ooh, it’s way out ahead, third, right at the back…come on boy, Yes! Well, who’d have thought it? My horse winning, er, coming second, third, er…shot in the paddock.’

The collapse was total. Centre Skills were able to move the ball like it was Lurpak Spreadable and the pitch was a slice of toast, buttered evenly and to its farthest reaches. Rarely did they concede a throw-in or lose the ball to a legal tackle. One of their diminutive forwards moved the ball as if it were a moon tethered by gravity or simply an extension of his shoe. He was regularly ungovernable, drawing fouls and intemperate lunges all over the pitch. As a result, they scored two direct free-kicks and one penalty before half-time, leaving the score 6-0 and our early donation of Evan/Kevin impossible to justify.

The second half was much better as Connor responded to his dad’s injunction to ‘find your engine’ by scoring with a fantastic left-footed strike after a driving run down the wing. Evan hurled a ball across the box, Rory Delap style, which Thanasie despatched clinically at close range. Ultimately, though, moments of coherence were about as common as a Dusky Thrush, and the Tilehurst coaches offered us the dubious privilege of playing with an extra player to countermand their superiority: “That’s taking the piss, that is. We’ve still got our dignity”, reflected a Wokingham parent afterwards.

So, a bizarre and punishing game edged towards its conclusion and the idea of a consolatory trip to Reading slowly formed in my mind, along with visions of a milkshake for Evan in the no-longer-so-smelly-alley of Union Street. Wrongly, though – as consistent with the unpredictability of the day – I assumed Oreo would be a shoo-in as his chosen flavour and looked forward to some intermittent sips. In the event, though,  Evan opted for – of all things – a milkshake based on the McVitie’s Gold Bar.

Walking beneath cross-hatched sunbeams along Kennet Side, rechristened the ‘Pigeon Line’ by Evan in recognition of the roof of Queen’s Road car park, Evan asked if I’d rather be a monk or a lawyer. My initial response was ‘Monk, because it’s quieter.’ On the way home, there was even some interesting light above Lower Earley and some elevation, contrary to its name, from which peach melba clouds were visible over Loddon Valley Police Station.

 

 

 

 

 

 

There were rumours of gales in Bailey and South East Iceland, becoming cyclonic, so it was a relief to cross the Loddon in clear winter sunshine this morning, with the Thames sea state only smooth or slight.

Our opponents in the A321 derby were Twyford Comets, but other than opportunities to ford the Loddon – as suggested by their name – there was little by way of common ground between us. I’m hopeful, though, that in the future we can look to Hurst or the outskirts of Winnersh – Wokingham, even – and meet at the Wheelrights Arms or Elephant & Castle to confer over Chantry Cheer or other local bitters on all that unites our districts other than the right wing of the Conservative Party.

On the subject of pubs, there seemed little option yesterday other than to raise a glass of San Miguel with Gary and Miguel at The Three Frogs, once visited by Barack Obama on a stag weekend. Miguel is a friend from Mexico and when we weren’t served too swiftly, Gary’s loud observation that ‘they obviously don’t like Mexicans here’ broke the ice all around. Perspective was offered by Miguel as he recounted crossing land borders in Central and South America, resolving never to do so again. The border guards will either take your money and phone ahead to say you’re rich and ripe for a double mugging, or simply not let you pass. He made the Tuns Crossroads and Coppid Beach Roundabout seem almost like trivial thresholds.

Aside from our decaying Ford, the focus of the morning was to feed Evan the energy he needed – both positive and food related. On the food front, he’d have Super Hoops in denial of Fulham’s lunchtime appointment with QPR, a banana, banana and coconut smoothie, Belvita biscuits, a suspended two-fingered wafer biscuit and copious amounts of albuterol sulphate to mitigate a hacking cough and the chances of bronchospasm.

Iris, meanwhile, would undergo double egg machinations: first scrambling them with me and then again with Nananne at lunchtime under the benign jurisdiction of Mam. For positive energy, I encouraged Evan to practise some skills in the lounge and dining room, an exercise which would reap a questionable harvest later on.

If you’re unfamiliar with the layout of the Goals Centre, pitches are named after famous stadia. Today we were at the Olympiastadion, Berlin, the ground at which we feel most at home when not at the Amsterdam Arena. The Olympiastadion also has the Glockenturm, a bell tower and observation deck which seems to find a strange echo in the Bulmershe Water Tower looming proprietorially behind one of the goals.

In a sense, after such difficult weeks leading up to the game, nothing seemed to matter other than the ability to remain unnerved by the data in front of us.

Twyford started laboriously yet with stultifying impact: we couldn’t seem to find a meaningful pass to undermine their sheer bland competence. Evan’s Cruyff turns and sidesteps worked on numerous occasions, yet we gifted them two goals, one from an innocuous throw-in and another when a pass down the line would have been a better option than a Maradona.

In the second half Wokingham fought back until Thanasie, at times as useful as a tap operated by a foot sensor and at others the cornerstone of our success, launched himself into the air to save a shot. Unfortunately, though, he wasn’t the goalkeeper so we conceded a penalty, lost the game and retreated to the bar – Evan, Ciara, Thanasie, Elias, Ian and I – for double-shot Americanos, light blue M&Ms and an ambiguous future, mainly moderate in the south.

 

After last week’s hypershambles, the coaches summoned us through Thursday’s sleet to an echoey gym in downtown Winnersh for some essential training. Hopefully the players would sweat out the toxins, emerging into the nothingy retail hinterlands of Berkshire with faculties unclouded by the bitterness of the past.

The idea was for the keeper to yell ‘SPACE’, prompting the defence and midfield to exploit the full dimensions of the pitch rather than to receive the ball in a potentially dangerous central position.

I’m not a good chess player, but perhaps this approach is analogous to the hypermodernist strategy of attacking on the flanks rather than through the middle, opting for something like Larsen’s Opening – utilising the peripheral pawns first – rather than a central attack through a more typical move such as the Queen’s Gambit.

If you expand, please don’t forget to compress. All the danger comes through the middle. Of course it does – the goals are centrally positioned. This means that any work on the flanks is always and obviously very much on the borders of relevance. We can nudge and shove the ball up and down the line, but that means nothing in the face of a Budapest Defence, a decent through ball or a Fried Liver Attack from Caversham.

Anyway, chess aside, we needed to play something resembling football rather than a shot at meaning in a dead letter office. Rest and recuperation from a difficult week at home, school or work is desirable and necessary, even biblical, but will have to be postponed to accommodate yet another win or loss: shame.

Have you ever wondered what God did on the seventh day? Brad Roberts has: ‘After seven days he was quite tired so God said “Let there be a day for picnics with wine and bread.” He gathered up some people he had made, created blankets and lay back in the shade. The people sipped their wine and what with God there they asked him questions like “Do you have to eat or get your hair cut in heaven? And if your eye got poked out in this life, will it be waiting up in heaven with your wife?”‘

On the way, I wanted to believe the auguries were good. As we passed the Bonwick Milling Heritage Consultancy (supporting owners and guardians of windmills) on Lines Road, we saw a flash of green in the grey winter sky: the parakeet of contested provenance. Were a pair released by Jimi Hendrix in 1960? Did they escape from Shepperton during some filming in 1951? Or have they been here much longer than that? Whichever way you look at it, whenever species proliferate they reach a tipping point at which it becomes acceptable to shoot them out of the sky.

When we eventually got to Woodley and the purgatorial lobby of The Goals Centre, the coaches were in bobble hats. Michael’s was swamp-green while Peter’s was an edgy yet warm and homely mixture of white, black and orange with BRONX woven into its central band. A static glare from Michael suggested we were slightly late for the warm up.

Once the game started, a marked improvement was evident in the team’s play as they whipped the ball across the pitch and down the line, but to little effect. Even Mulvaney’s nimiety of skill wasn’t granted much licence by Caversham’s tall and bustling defence, who in their dark red kits resembled Eddie Howe’s Bournemouth in their Championship winning season, closing down the opposition as if they were an independent cafe at a service station.

By half-time, it was 5-0 and Evan hadn’t even stepped on to the pitch proper. He showed some interesting flourishes, including an Ibrahimovic-style flick which nearly found the net, but didn’t quite warm up enough to find his rhythm. In the end, Jack scored an impressive goal – captured on film – but Wokingham could wrest very little from the wreckage of the first half.

This was a disappointing, chastening experience of being bombed out of the only cup competition we were left to compete in, the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy of youth football. We were left only to consider – with mystification and conjecture – the origins of the parakeet, what happens on a rest day in heaven and that enduring chestnut: concentration on the league.

 

 

An Omnishambles. So much so that Coach Michael decided to keep the Player of the Match wristband because ‘None of yous deserved it.’ All the parents agreed.

The ref was mentally gone, which didn’t help, but let’s rewind a bit first: before the game, we were buoyant. Granted, we hadn’t trained or played since December 17th, but we were up against a newly formed team who seemed raw as a flesh wound when we saw them gadding about on the Maiden Erlegh astro-turf in training last year.

New year, old choruses. Before the game, we asserted our identity and whipped out all the old classics courtesy of Oasis, Take That and The Buggles.

‘And all the roads we have to walk are winding/And all the goals that Evan scores are blinding/There are many ways Amelia will try to out-skill you on her own goal liiiine/But maybe, we’ll get the ball to Mulvaney/And after all, you’re my Coach Michaaaael.’

‘And now we understand the supernova scene/Oh-a-oh/Connor Mulvaney/Oh-a-oh/He’s called Thanasie/Oh-a-oh/We’ve got Jack Parry/Wokingham put the Caversham cars/  In the Thames Water reservoir/Ciara scored and we went one up/WHOA! A-oh-oh-oh.’

‘NEVER forget where you’ve come here from/NEVER forget the A329 (M)/SOMEDAY soon this will all be arable again/(It will be arable again!)’

Exercising the lungs is a cathartic way to start the new year. Most of us were deeply ill in various ways over Christmas, and arrived in Woodley by oblivious avenues: Woodlands, Beechwood, Western. The sky was a reassuringly nondescript grey and therefore wouldn’t mock us. As mentioned, the ref was mentally gone. Apparently he had a shocker in his previous game which sent him into a vortex of self reproach and indecision from which he would not be extricated. You know you’ve had a difficult game when the managers stop remonstrating and start counselling, as Michael did for the whole of half-time.

The players, too, were mentally unfurnished and physically uncoordinated, seemingly still under a cloud of holiday amnesia. I read a paragraph recently about a piano teacher called Edwin Fischer. Apparently he was ‘an inspiring teacher who led two generations of pianists away from the piano and back to themselves.’ But wasn’t he supposed to be a piano teacher? Wasn’t this an offence against the Trade Descriptions Act (1968)?

Maybe this is similar to Coach Michael’s attitude to the ref: ‘Listen son, don’t worry about it. Just forget about the effing reffing. It doesn’t matter. Close your mind to opinions from outside and only open it up again when you’re ready and to people you know and trust. You’ll get there, mate.’

Coach Peter, a former semi-pro striker with an excellent goalscoring record, has a similar attitude. ‘At this age, it isn’t really about the football. It’s about their social development. If they want to pursue football, they will.’ I love that, but when a football match is in progress, it’s really hard not to think about football. Hard for me, at least, but obviously not for the players. If I had 2p for every time I’d heard the phrase ‘away with the fairies’ since September 2015, I’d bother to go to Sainsbury’s to cash them in.

The mistakes in the first half were too many to itemise. As a taster, think of penalties given away, own goals conceded, fouls committed, balls uncontrolled, brains unutilised, attitudes questionable and players careering around like their feet were permanently fixed to the gas pedals of unsteerable dodgems. Hopefully you get the idea.

Perhaps it’s best to concentrate on the good bits. From a corner, Evan engineered a bit of space outside the box and scored with a brilliant strike into the left corner. Connor scored with a nonchalant swipe of his left foot to fool the keeper from three yards out. We huffed and puffed on the foothills of good play, but ultimately were undermined by the litany of errors listed above. At half-time, the score was 5-2, the match was lost and the ref commenced his counselling session. Peter augmented the encouraging words he could muster with some merited jabs of the finger.

The second half was better, but could hardly have been worse. We were left with some ruminative tunes to see the time out: ‘I wish today could be tomorrow/The night is dark/It just brings sorrow, let it wait.’ There was a flurry of pressure towards the end, with Connor scoring two in a minute, but ultimately we were left with Michael’s chastening words, and a twinkle in his eye as he said: ‘None of yous deserve the Player of the Match wristband this week. If you play like that next week in the cup, you’ll be out. So I’m going to keep it and give it to two of you next week when you play how we’ve learnt to.’

Some mid-season stats to kick off proceedings here, followed by the inevitable reflections on routes across the Thames and forgotten gloves etc.

Played 15  Won 6 Drawn 1 Lost 8  Goals Scored: 61  Goals Conceded: 84

Goals scored:  Mulvaney: 25  Saynor: 13 Parry: 8  Sexton: 6  Dance: 5 Xanthoulis: 2 Butler: 1 A. Mulvaney: 1

 

We seem to be locked into a never-ending battle with our neighbours from north of the border. Why are we playing Caversham again? Twyford Comets are in our league, but we’ve played them only once. Perhaps they’ve dissipated into the sky and are only visible at the ‘year’s midnight’ when ‘the sun is spent, and now his flasks/send forth light squibs/no constant rays’ and ‘the whole world’s sap is sunk.’ That could be Evan’s analysis, anyway. Looking up into a Crowthorne sky last Sunday, he said ‘Look, it’s Twyford! I know that because there’s still some detail in the clouds.’

Twyford, twylight – whatever. Coaches Peter and Michael were in Prague and London respectively, so before Connor, Amelia, Evan and I could even begin to contemplate the mists rolling in off the Loddon, we first had to find our way out of Woosehill. Which way do you turn when there are anonymous brown buildings in every direction? Citizens of Lower Earley have faced this crisis of being for the entire duration of their tenancy or period of home ownership. Woosehill is no different. All  roads curl at disappointing angles and you’re left with blind decisions, invariably leading you to either the right road in the wrong direction or the wrong road in the right direction, merging with a network of cul-de-sacs to confound even the most traffic-aware satnav, rendering it lost as a hospital corridor pacer looking for a ward that doesn’t exist or a bus to a time they’ve long since left.

‘In 200 yards, turn right but bear left. Do a U-turn and take the ramp. Continue for one mile, descending on the elevated section of the carriageway. At the roundabout, take the seventh exit and head back from whence you came.’

‘Where are we going?’ asked Amelia, understandably. It’s best to turn off all the voices at this stage. You’re doing a U-turn, but only because there’s nowhere else to go. It reminds me of heading for Accrington but ending up in Henley, doing a ten-point turn on an irrelevant country lane after the fire brigade had shut the town down.

While we were aiming to cross the Loddon on Sandford Lane, Caversham had a few bridges to choose from to traverse the ‘dirty old river’: Reading, Caversham, Sonning and if they’re really desperate – Whitchurch. In this weather, they would surely be reminded of Spike Milligan: ‘Let us look at the River Thames/ One of England’s watery gems/ Oily brown, greasy, muddy/ Looking foul, and smells of cruddy/ The conservancy say they’re cleaning it/ So why is it the colour of shit?’

Leaving all this shit behind, we weren’t exactly liberated. The manager has to remember: goalie gloves, goalie kit, footballs, Christmas cards for the team, notebook, pen, crumpled squad rotation diagram, Connor and Amelia’s apples and biscuits, Evan’s drink, inhaler, club jacket, fleece and shin pads, the skills trophy, the man of the match wristband, how to be civil and the if-all-else-fails fundamentals: wallet, keys and phone.

It’s always so convoluted; we had long deviated from Heron’s Shortest Path, but perhaps it’s best not to overreact or compare. Maybe Caversham had their own shinpad crises to contend with, their own over-beveraged parents or bumpy mornings to put up with. Perhaps they couldn’t find their inhalers, either. Maybe they were stuck in Waitrose car park (after stopping for a coffee but forgetting their MyWaitrose card) or behind a laggard on Peppard Road. Our under preparation wouldn’t equate to over preparation on their part.

On the way, Connor (he of 25 goals in 15 games) decided to float an idea my way: ‘Alex, do you think I could maybe play for three quarters of the game instead of half today?’ As you can imagine, I was not entirely unsympathetic to his perspective. ‘Connor, I’m not entirely unsympathetic to your perspective here mate. Erm, let me think about it.’ If there was any glitch in the memo, Connor would play for the duration.

In professional football, you can expect fines for pretty much anything, including newspapers in the medical room. Imagine the levy for missing two games running, without notice. This unnamed player deserves a Christmas bonus though, for good as he is, he gave me license to torch the spreadsheet and ditch the rotation. It really was foggy.  After a minute or two, we conceded our customary soft early goal after the ball sort of ricocheted off their striker and rolled in at 2mph. We’re so used to this, we just accept it as incompetence tax and move on. Soon we had a corner and scored from an unusual source: the ball fell to Ciara on the edge of the box and she wellied it for all she was worth: 1-1. Evan was out of the picture this stage, digitally revolved and carrying a knee injury sustained in training.

Thanasie Xanthoulis – another rare and temperamental source – popped up with the second goal before Connor opened his account on the stroke of half-time. I had been nicknamed ‘Big Sam’ (preferably for a degree of tactical brutalism rather than mere size, I guess) but in truth there wasn’t much of a tubthumping message I could give them at the break, other than to keep doing what they were doing: it will lead to the same results.

Evan tried to play in the second half, but limped off tearfully after only a few minutes. He wasn’t able to get back and defend, but we needed him to. It stayed 3-1 until fairly late in the second half, when Evan decided to re-enter the fray as a striker, minimising the possibility of stress on the knee. He soon picked up the ball opportunistically on the edge of the box and made the score 4-1, but it wasn’t comfortable. Caversham had a young Maldini at the back, a wise and nonchalant player who could easily play a telling ball to unlock our historical sieve of a defence. With 3 minutes to go, we were 4-3 up and anything could have happened. Thankfully, Evan fired the ball into the left corner with the outside of his right foot and Connor added another to make the final score 6-3 to the Satsumas. Amelia won the Skills Trophy for some fantastic flourishes, consistently outwitting her opponents who seemed to carry a degree of complacency in their assumption that they could take the ball from her at will.

On the way home, things took a philosohpical turn. Connor’s idea was to play ‘Would you Rather’, and he opened up with: ‘Would you rather be a bin or a window?’ This seemed weird, but also a great question. You’d naturally gravitate to the window side of the equation, perhaps, but quickly remember that a window can be cracked or smashed whereas a bin is routinely emptied of its rubbish and can be cleaned with anti-bacterial wipes.

 

Texts referred to:     A Nocturnal upon St. Lucy’s Day by John Donne

Father Thames by Spike Milligan

 

 

 

 

What a bizarre game against the shoulderclappers of Wokingham & Emmbrook Rangers. Coach Michael was about as organised as Britain’s response to Brexit, arriving without goalie gloves or the teamsheet. While he rushed back through the drizzle to get it, the ref said ‘In positions please!’ I had no choice but to select the team myself. Mark Sexton arrived late, but seemed altogether absent. Why oh why did I put him in goal?

We started with broadly the same line-up which was so unyielding last week. After 5 minutes, Michael arrived with his typically exaggerated view of the players’ fungibility. He rang the changes. Thanasie was taken off and collapsed in tears. Ciara entered the fray in her beanie hat. Josh was put on – except Josh wasn’t actually there, having omitted to arrive for the game. Amelia was thrown on instead. Confusion reigned.

I had been drafted in as garb monitor and henchperson – I tried to keep tearful Thanasie mollified, but he started making strangled, high pitched noises like an injured lupus cub. On the pitch, things weren’t much better. With Mark ‘gone’ (it would be an insult to space cadets to put him in the same category), when Rangers started taking shots, it was a disaster. Goals started flying in like seagulls at break time. At half-time it was 8-0.

For the team talk, I expected to take a back seat; the rotation policy has become a shibboleth – we’ve sort of been neutered by a spreadsheet. However, my perception of Michael as one of life’s great indifferentists (imagine Ringo Starr’s voice, amped up to 10 and pierced with a knitting needle: ‘Win or lose it doesn’t really matter: well played’) was ill-founded. He was not a happy bunny. He went absolutely Carragher: ‘We need to turn up here! You’re not doing anything we learnt in training and you’re not playing anything like you played last week.’ In a surprising gesture, seeing as I was there last week in Michael’s absence, he then said: ‘Now Alex, what have you got to say to them?’

Newly unsilenced, I was taken aback and my mind went blank. This was an opportunity to earn Michael’s trust after our confrontation a few weeks ago. So here goes: ‘Jack, you’re wandering around like a godwit. Now get your head on. Mark, I don’t know what to say to you. That was disgusting out there today. Amelia, this is football: you’ve been flailing aound like you’re drowning in the Limpopo. Now screw your head on. Evan, clean your teeth.’ No. What we really gave them was a clear reminder of the simple things they did so well last week: keeping their shape, passing, tackling back and taking their chances in the final third.

The second half was a completely different proposition: anyone could have told them they just needed to wake up. Evan was now up front and began to turn on the style, gammoning up their defence something proper and firing into the corner to pull a goal back. Rangers were not content to drift into the West Woodley doldrums, though. They had their own objectives to work towards and would do so, picking through the rubble of the opposition train wreck with scant regard for the casualties. They even sent their keeper up for corners, despite being 10 goals up. Crack shot Connor Mulvaney waited on the sidelines, patient and watchful in our brand new club jacket. His hat-trick in the last part of the game meant we won the second half 5-4.

There was absolutely no sugar coating from Michael after the game. “In the first half we weren’t very good. We were…”                                                                                                                  “Rubbish!” said Ciara.                                                                                                                                  “Well yes, in a word. Crikey, I feel like a proper manager here!”                                                      He sounded like it, too, and it was heartening to hear of the strengths of the second half after the absolute trout and zugzwang of the first.

 

n.b. Mark had a good second half, bless him: compos mentis, fiery and skilful.

 

Parklife: the pick of Friday night’s excellent range of covers by King Loud at the Broad Street Tavern brought all Adidas and Fred Perry in the house to the dance floor for a raucous, lager-fuelled nostalgia trip. Parklife back in the late 80s and early 90s, a time I remember with great fondness, meant playing on  bobbly, excrement-peppered surfaces in front of parents liberated from latter day FA Charter reminders that  ‘coaches are human beings, referees have feelings and linesmen are normal people whom we should treat with love and respect.’

When a player received the ball it was customary for parents to yell ‘Get rid of it’, causing us to bungle all over the pitch and hope for an individual moment of brilliance or a propitious bounce ‘in the mixer’ to get us out of jail. Parents would routinely argue or even fight with opposition parents and respect  was absolutely not on the agenda. One dad was a TV racing pundit, even more of a wide boy than Boycie from Only Fools and Horses. I remember him strutting onto the pitch with a fat cigar to confront the manager in the centre circle: ‘You don’t know what you’re doing. Why isn’t my lad up front?’ One fight spilled over into the car park after the game. Both mine and my brother’s teams contained players who were essentially criminals, some of whom are now in prison or dubiously bailed.

It was rough around the edges, but unforgettable and allowed us to develop great ball control under pressure – before we booted  it away again. Also, Saturdays were amazing. Training was at 9am after a chat with the milkman. We picked up a King Size Mars Bar on the way home and I savoured it after a hot bath while reading Roy of the Rovers magazine and waiting for Saint and Greavsie to start. There would be further treats in the afternoon with either a visit from grandparents or a trip to Fulham before The A Team in the evening and bed.

With Evan though, although we try to make his Saturdays broadly similar, we’d have to talk about ‘Astro-turf life’ rather than ‘Parklife.’ I’m not sure if it would quite have the same ring to it: ‘Confidence is a preference for the habitually rotated children of Wokingham: Astro-turf life! A morning stroll can be obstructed by a well meaning official with a clipboard: Astro-turf life! Who’s that floppy mop laughing? You should cut down on your chickpea felafel mate. Have a Mars Bar!’

England’s park life genuinely used to be mental. According to Stuart Hylton’s Little Book of Berkshire, the first recorded football match in the area was in 1598 between neighbouring parishes on the outskirts of Didcot, with church doors as goals. In a distant echo of Reading’s current vice captain, Chris, one of the parishes had a player called ‘Ould Gunter’ who ‘carried a dagger throughout the match with which he murdered two of the opposition, Richard and John Gregorie.’ This would have been a game of mob or ‘Shrovetide’ football, with teams of unlimited numbers. So was he a local villain, outlaw or evolutionary anomaly acting on instinct? Maybe, but ‘what was particularly striking was that Gunter was the local parish priest.’

Propelling a pig’s bladder between churches, with the only rule being to avoid manslaughter or murder in the process, was a rule which even priests couldn’t uphold: these are the roots of English football. Maybe the 80s weren’t so bad.  Coaches Michael and Peter, though, seem to favour tactics evocative of a time long before Christ and the mob values of his witnesses.

Wokingham & Emmbrook reanimate an era before 299 bc when Cuju was invented, a game which was unmistakably football, albeit with only one set of goalposts. FIFA recognise this as the first form of the game. As Cuju evolved, it split into two branches:  Zhuqiu and Bhaida. In Bhaida, which flourished during the Song Dynasty of 960 – 1279, goals became obsolete. There were no goalposts and scoring a goal was no longer part of the game. Points were awarded for keeping possession, practising skills, playing elegantly and outwitting opponents; they were deducted for poor passes and fouls. Judges awarded points for the quality of play and decided the winner accordingly. Wokingham’s footballing philosophy originates, as far as I can deduce, in Cuju; it’s the essence of Baida.

In the build up to the game, the coaches sent  a somewhat testy message to prepare me to take charge of the team: ‘Play the ball out from the back. That’s our base. Allow the players to make mistakes as that’s how they learn. The score doesn’t matter…’ A few weeks ago I had unwisely shouted out an instruction to Evan and was publicly reprimanded and embarrassed for doing so. I would never play a long ball game or have a go at someone for making a mistake, though, so I was slightly irritated. They are Baida personified: goals seem to be an irrelevance and an irritation, particularly if we score them. Indeed, when I texted later to report on the team’s goals and general success, the response was a manually produced ‘raised eyebrow’ emoticon: quizzical rather than celebratory.

Despite any residual frustration, though, Mrs Dance and I would stick to instructions; I admire and respect the coaches despite falling short of their ideological position. Mrs Dance took the team through an official warm up, while I rummaged around in plastic bags trying to find inhalers, goalie gloves, coats, drinks and our Gabor Kiraly Fulham goalie kit with ‘SAYNOR’ on the back. Soon after the game kicked off, Mark Sexton snuck through the Caversham defence like a lipid in The Royal Mint and sent us into an almost unprecedented 1-0 lead.

In the second half, we had to decide how rigidly we’d stick to the formation and philosophy. The coaches wanted 4 goalkeeper rotations in 40 minutes, and we adhered to that. However, when Evan drifted back into defence when he should’ve been attacking, we turned a blind eye: Evan loves defending, and we were 1-0 up. There was a bit of transgressive pragmatism in operation but we didn’t ‘park the bus.’ With no substitutes at all, there had to be room for interpretation to allow the players to sustain their brilliant show of energy.

It remained 1-0 until half-time before Caversham struck back with two impressive solo goals to condemn us to a probable defeat. Evan’s defensive position allowed him some space, though, and when the ball fell to him just inside their half, with only two minutes to go, he curled an equaliser brilliantly into the top left corner. A minute later, Josh broke free from the defence and struck decisively to win the game.

No acrimony followed the final whistle. Instead, the players lined up and shook each other’s hands sportingly, a gesture I eagerly monitor and slightly cringe at. It’s the perfect moment for a subtle comment, refused handshake, dirty look or slap to spoil the atmosphere. There was nothing of the sort. Their coach told us we had some good little players.  ‘Nothing to do with our Vorsprung Durch Technik though, mate’ I answered as we headed back towards the bar for a coffee and a bacon roll.

Three stalwarts of Wokingham – hair of white and grey attesting to a fair few trips around the sun – stood in the doorway of The Queen’s Head with a King Charles Spaniel and conversation seemingly determined by their adult children: ‘Well mine’s got whooping cough!’ offered one. I happened to know that the son in question has held cultic services on his mother’s lawn at god-forsaken hours of the morning. ‘Whooping cough? That’s something infants get. Are you sure?’ enquired the spaniel owner in a gently mocking tone. Whooping cough seems somehow incongruous with  the powers of darkness. Not sure why. Misguided though the coughing visionary may be, though,  sometimes you have to at least acknowledge the effort. They’ve done something rather than nothing.

A bit like Mr Brown in the song Next  Door Neighbour: ‘I wonder what became of him. They say he chucked the tele through the window. He went berserk and jacked whole world in. Although he may he have hit rock bottom, he went out with a bang and so he is not forgotten.’

So it is with Reeves Rangers. They  make a point, however unpalatable it may be. Their managers’ jackets are straight out of 1992 and so is their unkempt appearance and football. They make Gerry  Francis (‘What I said to them at half-time would be unprintable on the radio’) and Dave Bassett (‘We need to weigh up the pros and cons and put them in chronological order’) seem almost coherent and progressive.

It’s no exaggeration to say that every time the Reeves Rangers goalkeeper got the ball in the first half, he had a shot on goal. This despite a league directive which makes it compulsory for the opposition to retreat to the halfway line so the defence can play fluent football from the back. When a defender got the ball, the bestubbled gaffers went with ‘Have a crack, son’ instead of helping them to develop actual football skills such as passing and finding space. It was so infuriating to be around that I retreated to the Goals Centre foyer, which has the anonymous yet strangely comforting vibe of an ocean liner, to buy a bacon roll and a latte.

In so doing, I missed Evan’s first decisive contribution of the game since entering the fray after half-time: a goal from the edge of the box after a scramble following a corner, according to Andrew ‘vegan do it’ Parry, my preferred ally behind the green fence. I was disappointed with myself, but also replenished.

As the second half wore on, the Reeves Rangers managers even began to make the eponymous hero of Mike Bassett: England Manager seem enlightened when he named Ron Benson and Tony Hedges in the England squad: ‘Tony Hedges, York City? I didn’t pick him…And who’s this clown? Ron Benson, Plymouth Argyle?’                                                         ‘Look, Mike, they were on the list of players that you gave me!’                                               Mike: [holding up the cigarette box he wrote the squad list on]’Oh, come on, love! Show me where it says “Benson and Hedges” on that.’

As the match unravelled, we at times countered fire with fire, but at other times countered fire with that most redundant of redundant skills, the ‘rainbow flick’. It’s a hopelessly complicated manoeuvre which if successful results only in sending the ball into a loop in the air and an indeterminate, random fate as it drops. Still, it was amusing to see football stretch to these ideological extremes. Route 1 v Route What the hell are you trying to do there?

Connor was frustrated by some capable goalkeeping and Evan scored again, knocking the ball behind his left leg to create space and then finishing with a determined left footed prod into the corner. Even the Reeves managers, to give them their due, applauded our better efforts and stuck to wry smiles when faced with our none-too-veiled criticisms from the sidelines. Their agricultural tactics were within the laws of the game. Legal parameters and the consequences of breaching them are all that matters to some, it seems.

Perhaps Mike Bassett wasn’t as ignorant as we assumed either. He openly challenged England’s endemic drinking culture, after all,  when star player Kevin Tonkinson was found somewhat over the limit at the wheel. ’88 bloody milligrams! You go on the piss all day and you’ve ballooned out like the Pillsbury Doughboy! You’ve really let me down this time Tonka and f*** the apology. You could go to jail for this! What sort of system am I going to play then? Three across the middle and one in bloody Pentonville?’

This was a game between the pragmatists and the idealists. I’m still wondering where the balance should be.