Wilderspool Causeway

Reeves Rangers Shepherds 14 Wokingham and Emmbrook Oranges 3 (Parry 2, Mulvaney). Olympiastadion, Berlin.

Apparently, Wokingham and Emmbrook are an ‘FA Charter Club.’ This means that on Evan’s sleeve there is a picture of England’s Three Lions alongside the Golden Arches of McDonald’s. Small countries such as Switzerland and Uruguay produce better players than we do. Is there any reason why?

This was a local derby against the QPR of Wokingham. They were formed in 1975 by a QPR fan called Terry who lived on Reeves Way, and their shirt is a blue and white hooped effort in honour of the shambolic outfit from Shepherd’s Bush. I’m sure Terry would be proud of how the club has progressed, as they are now also an FA Charter club, which means that they too have a right to bear the sacred lions and arches on their arms.

Last week was a story of accursed beanie hats, and this week I was horrified to see a variety of colourful thermal leggings as Wokingham conducted their perfectly calibrated warm up. As mentioned last week, warmth should be generated from within, as far as possible. Granted, it was a cold morning, but this really was an embarrassment and all the Wokingham fans could do was gently send the scenario up with some adapted verses of Dead End Street:

On a cold and frosty morning,
Wipe my eyes and stop me yawning.
And my feet are nearly frozen,
Boil the tea and put some toast on.

What are we living for?
A nailed-on spanking from a fake QPR?
No chance to emigrate,
Cath Kidston leggings worn by our Number 8!

Quite frankly, I wasn’t in the mood for this. I wasn’t ‘feeling it’, as they say: the leggings, the beanies, the QPR connection, the forgotten gloves, the near certainty of defeat having seen our worst goalkeeper robed up to start the game between the sticks. I was ready to snap before we’d even started. Sure enough, within 1.3 seconds of kick-off, Reeves Rangers put the ball past an utterly unresponsive goalkeeper. A few seconds later, they scored from a throw-in: this is not permitted and will not stand! ‘Why have you given that, ref?’ I yelled, in contravention of the FA Charter (which, let’s face it, was fatally undermined from the moment they got in bed with Ronald McDonald). Unusually, the ref decided to answer, apportioning the blame to our keeper who apparently was supposed to know that if they left the ball without touching it at all, the goal wouldn’t have stood. Give me strength. Could the ref not see that this was already the most casual of cakewalks? The game was over.

Evan started in defence, looking about as comfortable as Donald Trump at a human rights convention as Queens Park Attendant after Queens Park Ranger skipped past him to effortlessly slot the ball home. Another dad said that Evan kept getting caught in possession due to his lack of confidence in the keeper. There was possibly some truth in this, or possibly he was just trying to help me feel better. Whichever way you look at it, the first half was an unmitigated disaster from which it would be impossible to recover.

To add insult to injury, the Reeves Rangers coaches decided that a half-time team talk wasn’t for them. They obviously felt too far ahead to issue any instructions whatsoever. They didn’t feel the need to warn against complacency; they didn’t see fit to encourage good sportsmanship or grace in victory. Instead, they allowed their charges to rampage around the pitch, disturbing the downcast Wokingham players as they sought to listen to Michael and Peter’s pick-me-up messages. I was reminded of a motto from Martyn Joseph’s Ryder Cup song: ‘To Lose with Honour and Win with Empathy.’ A good one to remember, perhaps, and in fact the shepherds did need to stay focused because Wokingham are always stronger in the second half.

Each of Wokingham’s goals were forced over the line from a yard out, like rugby tries.This was encouraging; they were going to go down fighting. The best of these resulted from Evan picking up the ball in an advanced position, where he’s more comfortable, taking it past a defender and threading a well-weighted ball through to Connor Mulvaney who scrambled it over the line after an initial save. The other two goals were courtesy of Jack Parry’s irrepressible tenacity. He’s like the figure in the Johnny Cash song: ‘You could stand me up at the gates of hell, but I won’t back down. I will stand my ground.’ At the end, his dad, a fellow Emmbrook pedagogue, said that it was the most depressed he had ever felt after a football match.

So there were some encouraging signs in the Woodley wasteland, but they were difficult to find. We were cheered up no end after the game, however, by the surprise arrival of Steve, Emma, Connie and Charlie, whose Maidenhead Dolphins team were up against Shinfield Rangers. Big up to you for the season!

January 16, 2016

Reeves Rangers Shepherds, Wokingham & Emmbrook
Marlow Royals 12 Wokingham and Emmbrook 6 (Mulvaney 3, Saynor 2, Parry) Amsterdam Arena.

i.m. Jo Trott

This is a difficult report to write. Jo took a great interest in Evan’s football and is one of the few people for whom we consciously play and write. That won’t change.

Today we were up against a team we had never faced before, a team from the affluent Chelsea Belt whose fans came bedecked in the most luxurious outdoor clobber available to man, as if they were expecting at any moment to be scooped up by private jet for an Esquire fashion shoot in the Pyrenees or by Lake Geneva. Woodley wasn’t really the place for them. Their pre-match banter was arcane, esoteric and difficult to latch on to. Oh no, it wasn’t actually: despite the most outlandish sartorial flair, it consisted of a series of mock/cock-er-nee standards:

‘Your boys done well to be fair.’
‘Yeah he’s a lovely fella mate. Diamond.’
‘Brilliant, yeah. Lovely jubbly mate. Gutted, I was.’
‘Lovely guy.’
‘Great fella’
‘Lovely stuff.’
Lovely.’
‘Bang on, mate.’
‘Yeah.’

I wondered who the source of all this loveliness was. Jose Mourinho, presumably. I looked down at my supermarket jeans, boots inherited a few years ago and hoodie from a discontinued high school drama called ‘Britannia High’ and thought…well I didn’t know what to think actually so I left the catalogue boys to their endearing London-based banter and watched from a wet and lonely vantage point, not noticing through the drizzle that my friends in the Wokingham and Emmbrook crew were amassed behind the railings at the opposite end of the pitch: huddled, dishevelled and half South African.

Equally clueless and ill-positioned, Wokingham spent the first few minutes (with Evan on the bench, I might add), bumbling around in the club beanie hats which had been misguidedly issued before the game. They looked brilliant in the warm up. I deleted sacred videos in a doomed attempt to free up space on my phone to capture them, but they were simply not right for the match. Anything which makes the experience more comfortable should be left in the bag, surely. That’s for after the match. When you’re under pressure, you need to generate the warmth from the effort you put in; if you start off freezing, being made warm artificially just won’t help you. On Thursday, Evan came home and said that during the Great Fire of London, ‘Samuel Pepys buried Parmesan, wine and his papers’ in the ground. In a strange moment as an 18-year-old, I bought a hardback biography of Samuel Pepys which I never read. I hurried to the index, but there was no mention of the cheese in question. Still, is it not a similar principle? In times of pressure, get rid of every extraneous encumbrance and rely on fight and ingenuity to survive: a slingshot. Bury your Parmesan.

Wokingham and Emmbrook drifted about meaninglessly while Marlow, in their Chelsea-style blue shirts and Chelsea-inflected accents, carved us apart with ease and alacrity, cruising into an unassailable 4-0 lead in no time at all. Things went from bad to worse and by half time it was 8-1, with only a deflected shot from Jack Parry for the coaches to seize on by way of consolation during the team talk. Without wishing to be too critical, perhaps the first good decision of the day was to put Evan and Connor on the pitch at the same time. Soon after the whistle, Evan ran down the left flank and hit a brilliant left-footed lob over the keeper. A couple of minutes later he found a bit of space at the edge of the box and side-footed the ball into the corner before Connor seized the initiative, scoring a hat-trick- including an outstanding left-footed effort from range- as Marlow, bereft of subs, began to tire. This is when the Marlow coach began to earn his money.

Jurgen Klopp currently has a hamstring crisis to deal with at Liverpool; not only that, he has to engage with Sam Silly Sausage of Sunderland in the media. But at least Klopp’s problems are real. In typical Chelsea style, Marlow began to invent problems, skilfully arresting Wokingham’s progress and momentum. Suddenly, players were hitting the floor. I heard Evan lash out at one after a corner: ‘You’re just on the floor because you want a penalty.’ Suddenly, the goalkeeper had a problem and it was crucial for the coach to enter the fray for some much needed ‘glove adjustment time.’

Neither the problems, nor the time, really existed. During a New Year’s Eve training session I told Evan that we’d be going home ‘in a minute.’ He replied ‘Is that a real minute or a notional minute?’ I had introduced him to the idea of a ‘notional minute’ because of his tendency to count to sixty when told something will happen ‘in a minute.’ Surely it’s good to learn that words are often devoid of content, have pragmatic rather than literal meaning and are often empty signs designed to guide you towards some kind of holding pen while adults decide what to do. So if the ref was asked if he was going to add time on due to stoppages, he would have made the best noises he could but the fact was that the Amsterdam Arena had to be evacuated by 10:30. Notional minutes were in abundance. I have since tried to introduce the idea of a ‘notional biscuit’ too, but that hasn’t been quite so successful.

Marlow were soon able to find a rhythm of their own and score a few more goals, sending their well groomed acolytes back to Buckinghamshire with the fairly innocuous-seeming pride they arrived with, as well as a few shots across the bow courtesy of Evan and Connor.

January 9, 2016

Jo Trott, Marlow Royals, Wokingham & Emmbrook
Caversham Trents 0 Wokingham and Emmbrook 11 (eleven) Mulvaney 3, Saynor 3, Dance 2, Zanthoulis 1, Parry 1, Hood (og)

N.B. If planning to read this, you might want to make yourself comfortable as it’s an end of year extended edit.

Vanilla latte lid crisis averted, we arrived at Woodley Goals Centre for yet another battle of North v South, but this time with a difference: the Trents not only claim Caversham and North Reading as their own, but also vast swathes of the Midlands, stretching from Biddulph Moor in Staffordshire to the six towns of the Potteries and through the Nottingham Home Sluices to the fringes of Scunthorpe and the North Sea. Not only does this team claim an outrageous geographical area, but also a literary prestige derived from the words of Henry Hotspur in Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1: ‘See how this river comes me cranking in, and cuts me from the best of all my land a huge half-moon, a monstrous cantle out. I’ll have the current in this place damm’d up; and here the smug and silver Trent shall run in a new channel, fair and evenly; it shall not wind with such a deep indent, to rob me of so rich a bottom here.’

Perhaps the weight of history and culture acted as an albatross around their necks, for the Trents failed to orchestrate anything of meaning or coherence in the opening exchanges of the game, thwarted by Wokingham’s high pressing style and that low, brooding Woodley sky. They had the haircuts; they had the boots. They had half the country implicated in their name. But did they have the wherewithal to resist Mulvaney, Mulvaney, Dance, Saynor, Sexton, Parry, Xanthoulis and Butler (those future Berkshire lawyers)? They looked about as comfortable as Paul Trott opening up for George Osborne at the Conservative Party Conference, or sharing a pint with Nigel Farage at the Duke of Wellington. The first half was all but lost to meaninglessness as the ref seemed to drift about in a parallel dimension, gesturing aimlessly and struggling to elicit sound from his central implement, no matter how hard he blew.

The signs were good, however, for this was a game selected by Gags for attendance and it seemed unlikely that he would fail to weave his observational magic. Which game did he pick as his first Fulham match of the season? Fulham 4 QPR 0. Which game did mere mortals such as myself pick? A draw against Cardiff. Risk, table tennis, Monopoly, Scrabble, Pictionary, Snakes and Ladders, Tiddlywinks? Not gonna happen. The Divine Comedy summed it up nicely: ‘Can you beat your dad at chess? It’s harder than you think. Sit him down at Christmas, turn the TV off, give him lots of chocolates and a drink and he might give you a match and when you’ve been duly dispatched he will laugh Ha ha ha And you’ll say, “one more game.”

My explanation of how well Evan played last week was superfluous. Gags would have worked it out before the opening credits had faded and so, with a sense of predetermined fortune, the first significant moment in the game was Evan seizing upon a loose ball, controlling it with one touch and slamming it into the corner: 1-0. ‘I see what you mean’, said Gags.

After that, we were riding the Severn bore while they were drifting into the Humber. Josh Dance went steaming into challenges all over the pitch, bending the game to his will and scoring 2 before half time. Mulvaney added a delicate left-footed effort and the score was 4-0 at the break. Wokingham and Emmbrook had never kept a clean sheet for an entire half before. With a 4 goal lead, Coach Michael might have been forgiven for easing up on the teamtalk a little bit: no way. He was on their level, pointing, gesticulating and sweeping his hand back and forth as if he was Rafa Benitez calling his children in from the sea.

With Wokingham on the front foot again, they were soon awarded a free kick. Please Evan, do your stuff with Gags and Joe here. With a nonchalant movement of the arm, he waved Mark Sexton away and began his measured approach to the ball, hitting it with verve above the height of the bar before watching it dip into the top corner for an outstanding goal: 5-0. The intensity remained. Jack Parry, fresh from spells in goal and on the bench, ran diagonally past two players and was shoved slightly before slotting in an excellent goal. Rather than succumbing to euphoria, however, he ran the length of the pitch to the parents congregated behind the opposite goal and with a manic look yelled ‘Dad, that boy’s a FOULER! He pulled my shirt!’ As Joe noted, this is a boy whose life is clearly orientated towards higher purposes: those of justice in the game along with all the nobler qualities open to human aspiration. We salute him for that.

Despite the goals continuing to flow, there was a tragic moment in the game. Right near the end, Amelia Mulvaney burst through and shot; the keeper saved it but the ball hit the post and rolled back across the line, appearing- to Amelia- to cross it. She ran to Coach Michael, her dad, throwing herself into his arms in celebration. The goal, however, was disallowed and Amelia was broken for that moment: cue more waterworks than the River Trent could contain. After the game, with Caversham packed back off to the Potteries, a special moment was enjoyed by all. Connor and Amelia crossed hands to receive a joint share in the Man of the Match wristband in what was a fitting end to an excellent performance and a brilliant way to sign off for the Christmas break.

December 12, 2015

Caversham Trents, Wokingham & Emmbrook
Westwood Wanderers Colts U7s 8 Wokingham and Emmbrook U7s 5 (Mulvaney 2, Saynor 2, Sexton)

Rehabilitation almost complete, I was back in the dugout as assistant manager for the visit of Westwood Wanderers to the Maracana. With everyone at a low ebb, it’s heartening to see signs of life where possible. As Neil Hannon crooned: ‘If you’re wondering why this tired old world sometimes seems brand new: it’s you.’ As we took to the field, it wasn’t long before events took their usual turn towards the bizarre, lifting the spirits. A somewhat weakened line-up began the game but defended with passion and effort; still, it wasn’t long before the Woodland Folk scored their first goal, adding 3 more in the ensuing 5 minutes with Mulvaney and Saynor bench bound.

The source of the oddness, to be frank, was the referee. The lads who turn out to officiate on these cold mornings deserve a lot of credit, but this was the kind of chap who when asked to remove a pen from their pencil case (in a school, for example), looks at you as if you’re probably addressing them in Hindi and are to be pitied. In a complete world of his own, he made wrong call after wrong call, missed several clear fouls and sometimes didn’t bother to give throw-ins at all. I was reminded of a line from The Archers this week: ‘Jane doesn’t need a mentor. She needs a brain transplant.’

With Mulvaney back on the pitch, things soon improved for the Satsumas as the Woodlanders’ direct and combative players struggled to legislate for the skill of Connor, who scored one himself and opened up the space for Mark Sexton to add another. The half time team talk centred on various clothing alterations and instructions from Coach Peter for Evan along the lines of a child friendly ‘Don’t piss about with it, son; control it, use your skill if you need to and shoot.’ 5 minutes in, the ball was put through to Evan and just inside their half, he knocked it slightly to the right and then hammered it across the goal to make the score 4:3.

Unfortunately, Westwood Glen then scored two very good goals themselves before a ludicrous ‘sleeve stoppage.’ Somehow, a Woodlander contrived to get their hand stuck within their sleeve, and it wouldn’t emerge from the typically and logically designed hand liberation gap. Do you imagine that the ref was able to offer much support with this? I thought not. Watching them wobble about trying to get the hand through made you wonder exactly what had become of man at this stage of our process.

Controlling the pace of the game with this sleeve business, Wanderers then managed to score again and the noise level really grew. As we sought to issue instructions to the players, I was reminded of trying to teach after each day’s break time Seagull Festival. There really are a lot of seagulls in Winnersh at times.
‘Where the hell did all these seagulls come from?’
‘Maybe they were bussed in from Brighton, sir.’
Pity the next driver if that was the case. And what would have happened when they stopped at the services? Would they have been allowed out to stretch their wings?

With the game pretty much out of sight, Evan managed to score from a corner, curling it in with the help of some dodgy goalkeeping. He was rewarded with the ‘Skill Trophy’ (awarded by Peter, of course), while I gave the Man of the Match wristband to Mark Sexton. However, we did both admit afterwards that our minds had gone a bit iffy when giving these things out. I might criticise the ref, but I think a little bit of responsibility can cause the mind to go weird, honestly. Before the game, Evan said ‘I want to live in Manchester because there’s not much wars there and I already understand their language.’ Not sure a conurbation straddling Lancashire and Cheshire was the place to do it, but it was definitely time to go and sleep this life off for a bit.

December 5, 2015

Westwood Wanderers Colts, Wokingham & Emmbrook
Caversham Kites 3 Wokingham and Emmbrook 6 (Mulvaney 3 Butler 1 Saynor 1 Zanthoulis 1)

This was one of those games in which Cheerios played an essential part: in their original form, variations and own-brand imitations. As Ciara raced through to score the opening goal, someone made an enquiry of her dad as to what she had for breakfast. Honey Nut Cheerios. Prior to the game, a mini conference was convened in the bar of the ferry, at which Ciara’s dad was absent. ‘What did you have for breakfast, Evan?’ asked Coach Michael in his booming Scouse tones. ‘Half a milky bar’ replied Evan, at a distinct tangent to the truth. I added that he’d also had Shreddies. ‘With warm milk or cold, Evan?’ asked Coach Peter calmly and with almost a hint of resignation. ‘And did you warm the milk up in the microwave or the pan, Evan?’ added Michael, strongly. Microwave. It transpired that only Thanasie, animated by toast, opted for a non-cereal pathway, with Connor going for straight-down-the-line Cheerios and Jack fuelled by cheerios with a small c, in their Morrison’s format.

Breakfast conversation over, we took to the Amsterdam Arena to engage in yet another North v South battle of mid-Berkshire with Caversham, this time in their ‘Caversham Kites’ manifestation. In the car park, their coach seemed perky. Apparently he had done some scouting on us and was quite confident of a win, if I understood him correctly. I also ventured over the bridge to test the temperature of Caversham Heights, the heartland of their operations. Emerging from a sideroom of The Grosvenor to an almost empty pub, the words of Michael Stipe came through the speakers: ‘Jesus loves me fine, and your words fall flat this time.’

Soon after Ciara’s opener, there was a bit of needle in the crowd. One of their shaven-headed (albeit to ameliorate the effects of baldness) supporters decided to trespass onto the pitch. Their goalkeeper took a goal kick and managed to score an own goal. ‘Just let him take it again ref. it’s a goal kick’ said the villager. I don’t understand how the ref managed to twist the rules so far that he was able to accommodate this statement, but somehow he did. No goal. The game then turned in the Kites’ favour and they hit back with two goals before half-time.

There’s a phrase which is repeated on Gardeners’ Question Time by the likes of Bunny Guinness, Chris Beardshaw and Anne Swithinbank: ‘Plant your earlies late and your lates early.’ I noted it down because I really wanted to shoehorn it into this report somehow. Well, Thanasie made an early run, but he made it late in the sense that it was spontaneous, an unpremeditated decision to break out of defence; it wasn’t practised. Evan put a perfectly weighted ball through to him and he scored: 2-2. Conversely, you can plant the idea of a late run early because late runs are known to be effective and are often rehearsed on the training ground. Another comment was ‘I inherited a tree peony, but I inherited it in the wrong place.’ That’s a difficult one to interpret. A further question related to where to re-pot a flowering gerbera: again, not an idea which particularly works in footballing terms.

Something which does work in footballing terms, however, is Connor Mulvaney. He scored three goals in the second half, one of which was an outstanding left footed shot which curled over the keeper and into the top corner. Evan added a neat finish and although the Kites pulled one back, justice was done in the end. However, I had to be careful not to stress the injustices of the game too strongly to Evan. I had to ensure he knew that our quarrel with Caversham was not ideological or motivated by religious or political differences. The other day, Evan, in a sort of mini role play, said in a lighthearted voice: ‘I’m a Catholic. I’m going to kill the Queen.’ Guess which aspect of history they had been taught earlier this month? How far from sanity do you have to migrate in order to cast Catholics as history’s primary aggressors? Time to ditch this topic, surely.

On the Chiswick Flyover after the game, he said: ‘Will we be anywhere near the houses of parliament? What’s going to happen there?’ I didn’t feel it appropriate to show him my one picture of politicians (Jeremy Corbyn and Gerry Adams out larging it), so just said it was a load of men and women arguing, a bit like on your school council but less civilised. This seemed to placate him, but he did burst into tears twice during Fulham v Preston because ‘the ref’s only being fair to them and not to us’ (true). I’m not really sure how to answer these points, particularly when they seem both true and part of a trend, so can only end with a couple of nods to people with great wisdom, humour and sanity who were in our thoughts today. Chris Doughty was in our thoughts because we chatted with him at the petrol station opposite Loddon Bridge Road- top lad. Jo Trott was in our thoughts because we hope you’re feeling better this weekend and dedicate you the victory!

November 28, 2015

Caversham Kites
Wokingham and Emmbrook U7’s 4 Caversham Arrows 8 (Mulvaney 2, Sexton, Parry) BYDL Cup Round 2

After a somewhat questionable managerial debut two weeks ago, I was summoned to a downstairs room of The Wokingham Masonic Centre to meet with officials from the upper echelons of the Wokingham and Emmbrook hierarchy. There was possibly nothing odd in that, given recent cuts to council budgets and a shortage of meeting space, but as my co-manager and I took our places among the caped brethren it soon became clear that the 20-1 defeat we presided over had not gone down too well, rousing the powers that be from their lodge-based slumber.

They were more than mildly shipped off, and as we were led towards the pillar of Boaz to bow in penitence- which we did not- they explained to us in complex pigpen cipher that, basically, we are a pair of morons. We have brought the town into disrepute, will now be tracked in perpetuity and will not be admitted to future games for an indefinite period. This makes today’s report quite tricky as once Evan was dropped off, I was left to retreat to Bulmershe Water Tower to watch what I could through binoculars and rely on text updates from the ever faithful Joe and Lewis Walker.

We were up against a team called ‘Caversham Arrows’ from an exotic region north of the River Thames I’m not entirely familiar with where you can go for a drink at The Griffin, The Moderation, The Alto Lounge, The Grosvenor, The Clifton Arms, The Crown on the Bridge, The Island, The Prince of Wales, The White Horse, The Gardeners’ Arms or- if you prefer Wetherspoon’s- The Baron Cadogan. If you’re not careful in Caversham Heights, you’ll end up in Mapledurham or Woodcote- the outskirts of Oxford, even. While Lower Caversham has a slightly grittier reputation, don’t be fooled by the upper area’s appearance of bucolic charm. You never know what goes on behind those net curtains, the pills that are popped, the barrenness of the cultural desert trudged through every day.

So these boys come from a different place, a place which no-one has been to. From what I can gather of the game, they scored WITHIN a second, and added 3 more very quickly. In the water tower, Text 1 read: ‘5 mins gone, 0-4. Mulvaney on.’ ‘Mulvaney on’ meant Mulvaney had been off- and I was sitting there in wet jeans and trainers, seething. How can you start a game without Connor Mulvaney? How can you set up a meeting with local freemasons for the people who helped you out, and then leave Connor Mulvaney- your own son and nephew- on the bench? Evan’s really great, Mark’s great- they all contribute in different ways, sometimes outstandingly. But Connor tends to be beyond great. He’s a Glen Campbell among Noel Gallaghers. You do not leave Glen Campbell on the bench, even if he has Alzheimer’s. Glen Campbell needs to be on the pitch, playing. Noel Gallagher isn’t fit to tie his shoelaces, isn’t fit to wipe his arse. Text 2: ‘Half-time 5-4 down. Mulvaney’s turned it.’ Obviously! Yes Connor, we’re back in the game son!

In the second half I was able to find a slightly better vantage point to the side of the tower, but could still only see blobs of red and orange, and then one blob of orange and several blobs of red. It was hard to work out what was going on, but then suddenly I heard a roar and saw the orange blob advance with a cry of ‘CHARGE!’ In Under 7’s football, the opposing team have to wait on the halfway line to allow the goalkeeper to roll the ball out to the defenders. This is supposed to cultivate a passing game and reduce the pressure on defenders. However, Wokingham and Emmbrook found a way around this by waiting on the halfway line and then re-enacting the Charge of the Light Brigade whenever the keeper released it. Even from a distance, I could sense the hilarity this provoked, though it was ultimately unsuccessful as a strategy. Final text: ‘8-4 final score, councillor gone, come back in for the team talk.’ I’m glad I did because Evan was awarded Man of the Match, apparently having pulled the strings in midfield to engineer an- albeit abortive- comeback, executing some tricky skills along the way to pick up the trophy.

November 14, 2015

Caversham Arrows
Westwood Wanderers Colts U7s 1 Wokingham and Emmbrook U7s 2 (Dance, Mulvaney)

n.b. This was a cup game with a later kick-off time of 10:30

Sometimes a seemingly innocuous moment or conversation at training can prefigure what’s to come on Saturday. On Thursday evening, Evan and Mark ran out onto the dark and uneven surfaces of Forest School’s car park. As he turned a corner, I yelled ‘EVAN!’, but Mark’s mum was sanguine. She said “Well Mark is the George Best of the team, you know.”
I wasn’t so sure. “Really?”
“Yes, we had Amelia (the coach’s daughter) round the other day and Mark gave her a Fanta. Her dad told me that she normally only has water.”
It seems that Amelia benefitted from the sugar rush because her commitment to Cruyff turns and drag backs paid off in style and when I mentioned to Mark’s mum that the team were playing well, she said “Yes, it’s probably because of the lie in.” A lie in for a six-year-old? Again, that’s news to me, but Mark’s maverick, Fanta-driven worldview seems to have its benefits when the kick-off is pushed back. He was committed, effective and demonstrated a (hitherto undetectable) mental alertness which made him a vital component of the team.

Another important conversation was one conducted by text message with Marjie Walker, hardened supporter and the Wokingham and Emmbrook firm’s ‘top boy’, as it were, along with the sartorially elegant Joe Walker. As you may know, Marjie is ultra-conversant with the ways of the iphone, and when arranging a ‘meet’ is able to baffle and befuddle even the most proficient of emoji users and linguists, of which I am not. On this occasion she outwitted both the Westwood Wanderers crew and Woodley Cyber Crime Squad in just a few words by opting for French: ‘Tu veux un cafe a Costa a demain? Je t’emporterai un grande latte si tu veux?! Sucre ou non? A bientot’ (accents included). So having managed to outwit the authorities by a variety of means to gain entrance to the facility, the support they offered, at the peak of Woodley’s monsoon season, genuinely buoyed the team as they sought to contend with Westwood Wanderers’ niggly and ill-timed challenges.

Against the run of play, Wanderers took the lead in the first half, but the second half belonged to Wokingham. From one free-kick, Evan shot from well inside his own half (a cleaner strike you will not see), but it was saved as it dipped towards the top corner. An equaliser wasn’t long in coming though, with Josh Dance calmly finishing from close range sfter sustained pressure. When it looked as if we were heading for extra time, another free kick was awarded and this time it was star man Connor Mulvaney’s turn. There seemed to be something curious about the angle he approached the ball at, but what do I know? As his left foot connected, well…he pinged it unstoppably into the far corner, sending Wokingham and Emmbrook through to the next round. As Evan was excitedly speaking through the fence after the game, he was taken out, ambushed by our resident George Best’s exuberant embrace. Evan got up, clipped his heels and they were off running again.

This was a victory for spirit and creativity, both on and off the pitch, so it was fitting that fans left the ground singing both ‘Autumn Almanac’ by The Kinks and Ray Davies’ ‘Next Door Neighbour.’

‘Friday evenings, peeeeeeople get together,
Hiiiiiiiiding from the weather.
Tea and toasted, buttered currant buns
Can’t compensate for lack of sun,
Because the summer’s all gawn.’

‘Mr. Smith, another story
I wonder what became of him?
They say he threw the telly through the window
He went berserk and jacked the whole world in
They say he may have hit rock bottom
Still, he went out with a BANG and so he is not forgotten.’

November 7, 2015

Evan, Football, Westwood Wanderers Colts, Wokingham and Emmbrook
Woodley Wanderers Scorpions U7s 4 Wokingham and Emmbrook Oranges U7s 3 (Mulvaney 2, Saynor)

According to one of the strangest charts I’ve ever seen, published in The Daily Telegraph, today’s teams represent the best two postcodes in the country in which to enjoy a high quality of life. Apparently, average earnings are high, the schools are OK and nothing else really matters. You certainly wouldn’t think it possible to drive on the Reading Road or any of its tributaries and think ‘this is a nice place.’ Nobody would do that, surely. Last week, though, I chatted to a grandmother from Worcestershire. She said ‘they don’t have facilities like this in Worcester.’ So there you go.

Today the teams took a break from The Amsterdam Arena and the Olympiastadion and played at the damningly named Camp Nou. There was an element of confusion before the game because one of the parents (the type who has seen enough before they’ve even woken up) arrived in an orange tracksuit and conducted a training drill with the waiting Wokingham and Emmbrook players, also dressed in orange. He was dressed appropriately for the task he had set himself. The ref said ‘Excuse me coach, we’re going to start the game’ to which the orangeman replied ‘I’m not the coach’ and carried on with the drill.

Sometimes people take action. They get involved and they get mobile, however ill-advisedly. They thrust themselves into a zone of animation. They bark and cajole or speak quietly if they deem that to be a more soothing and therapeutic coaching pathway. Unfortunately, as we know, at least 99.9% of instructions to 6 year-olds are redundant. If you tell them to do one thing, they’ll forget to do lots of things. If you tell them to do lots of things, increasing the inputs, you just increase the randomness of the output.

When the game started, Wokingham reassuringly conceded a soft goal in an extremely short space of time indeed. The game then sort of degenerated into niggly nothingness. There were more free kicks than in any of the previous games put together and you wondered whether the players were battling for the Telegraph summit, cognisant of their rival status as top towns in Britain. The Woodley players seemed to commit more fouls, but the Oranges committed the more decisive ones. Evan started the game on the bench and then played in goal until half time, making a couple of good saves before handling outside the area and conceding Woodley’s second.
After the break he played up front, and quickly latched on to a through ball, hammering it into the corner to make it 2-1. In Woodley’s next attack, one of their strikers was felled just outside the box and scored from the resulting free kick. Connor Mulvaney then put an extraordinary shift in, scoring two goals to wrestle the game back again before a ridiculous rugby tackle right at the end resulted in Woodley scoring a penalty (taken twice due to incursion) to win the game. The Woodley fans were jubilant, but were cryptically targeted by the Wokingham faithful with an adapted version of Love etc by The Pet Shop Boys:

DON’T HAVE TO BE
a big bucks Hollywood star
DON’T HAVE TO DRIVE
a super car to get far
DON’T HAVE TO WEAR
a smile much colder than ice
DON’T HAVE TO BE
beautiful but it’s nice

YOU NEED MORE than the Gerhard Richter hanging on your wall,
a gulf stream jet to take you door to door
somewhere chic near The Bulmershe School
You need more, you need more, you need more, you need more,
YOU NEED LOVE.

October 17, 2015

Evan, Football, Woodley Wanderers Scorpions
Theale Tigers U7s Undisclosed Wokingham and Emmbrook U7s 2

Every hot streak comes to an end. One day, the sun will turn into a red giant, oceans will be brought to the boil and Earth will cop the big one as the sun dips out of hydrogen and burns in enlarged form for a further billion years before the final Student Loans Company statement is extinguished and their officials throw in the towel, watching on like honorary pagans. As Solomon is said to have noted, ‘There’s a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to fuck up against Theale’ (hopefully a time to do them over too). This was all about the breaking down and the plucking up. Without being too specific, it is hard to find words to capture the ineptitude of the performance.

A goal was conceded after 1.3 seconds, as usual. And they just kept on coming. My mood darkened irretrievably after the 6th in 5 minutes while other parents were of the persuasion that ‘it’s just a bit of fun, though, isn’t it?’ They are entitled to their opinion. I ventured into the Theale area to gauge the mood of their usually vociferous fans and all I heard was a sheepish ‘I hate to see a team get battered like this.’ That summed up the feeling that lingered and which one tried desperately not to project on to the youngster at the end as we headed straight for the vending machines.

October 12, 2015

Evan, Football, Theale Tigers
Westwood Wanderers U7s 6 Wokingham & Emmbrook U7s 7 (Mulvaney 3, Sexton 2, Saynor 1, Parry 1)

Everyone who arrives at Woodley Goals Centre is a survivor. What they have survived, we don’t know. Whether they will continue to survive and for how long, we’re not sure. Today, Wokingham were up against the enigmatically named Westwood Wanderers, in what became one of the most physical encounters I’ve seen since accidentally stumbling into John Major’s office in the latter stages of his era. As we entered the Olympiastadion of Woodley, it became clear that most of the Wanderers were sponsored by ‘KPC Plastering’, apart from one boy who had two phone numbers on his chest. On closer inspection he was advertising a group of electricians from Tilehurst called ‘Burden Electrical’ who could be contacted on two possible numbers by parents watching the game, if only he would hold still long enough for them to be noted down or typed into phone memories. As is customary, Wokingham conceded a goal after about 1.3 seconds of the game. Connor Mulvaney then then found a vein of form which was entirely absent last week and hit back with two quick goals before Westwood fortuitously equalised with a deflected shot. At this point, the game began to follow the oft-negotiated path first identified by Eric Jarosinski: ‘First as tragedy. Then as farce. Then as tragedy-farce banana smoothie.’

As the seemingly sweet and innocuous Westwood team prodded, poked, yanked and bundled, it became difficult to decide whether a ruck in one half of the pitch took precedence over a two-footed lunge in the other. In this process, the referee was about as useful as an inquisitive rustic at the scene of a Normandy plane crash. Amidst the confusion, Wokingham took decisive control of the game with two goals from Mark Sexton, one from Jack Parry and another good goal from Evan who controlled the ball at the edge of the box before hammering it past the keeper. With about 10 minutes to go Westwood began a fightback, and it seemed inevitable, somehow, that they would go on to win. With the score now at 6-4, and with the Wokingham parents beginning to feel about as nervous as Robbie Fowler walking past a sniffer dog, the ball fell to a generally clued-up Amelia Mulvaney at the edge of her own box. Instead of kicking the ball in an appropriate direction, she opted for a back heel to her goalkeeper which was punished easily, resulting in a score of 6-5 with two minutes to go.

At this point it’s worth noting that there are some phrases which should not be shouted at a children’s football match. Leaving obscenities aside, many staple comments are simply idiotic and untrue and consequently baffling to 6- year-olds. One of these is ‘second ball.’ There’s no such thing as a second ball, and even if there is, 6 and 7-year-olds are clearly without a scooby as to the implications of it being yelled from the sideline. Likewise, I’m afraid, with ‘unlucky.’ If what you have witnessed is total incompetence which is bound to fail, then it’s not ‘unlucky’ when it does. It’s inevitable. But then shouting ‘inevitable failure!’ or ‘dogshit’ wouldn’t help either; issuing worthwhile instructions to small people is quite difficult- and, actually, forbidden by Wokingham and Emmbrook’s code of conduct. Thankfully, Amelia’s showboating was the final stop on the tragedy-farce-banana smoothie continuum and we were left to savour the right boot of Connor Mulvaney as he executed an incredible Mark Hughes style acrobatic half volley to seal the victory.

October 3, 2015

Westwood Wanderers