Wilderspool Causeway

Huddled in the swirly-carpeted foyer of Woodley Goals Centre, we were introduced to a new concept: mid-season relegation. Apparently, it’s called ‘streamlining.’ As this was explained, the general decor reminded me of fruitless Stena Sealink trips to Boulogne and an encroaching sense of dread took me back to the ‘deck of infirmity’ of the Portsmouth to St. Malo crossing of ’99.

So as a result of ‘streamlining’, ‘restructuring’ and ‘appeasing the Knights of Malta’, we were scheduled to face the Caversham Arrows team who beat us 8-4 in the cup last week. Instead of a warm up, coaches Michael and Peter opted for a ‘stay warm’, enjoining the team not to take to Woodley’s bleak landscape until the very last minute in the hope that thawing out would not be the theme of the opening minutes. It was worth a try, but one player was late and started the game frozen in her beanie hat, allowing Caversham to score within 1.3 seconds of the game. They soon scored again and the pattern of general ineptitude punctuated by redundant flair looked set to culminate in another defeat.

Caversham crossed one of the bridges this morning with a sense of optimism tinged with a gentle bout of the Rumsfelds: they knew that they didn’t know how Wokingham would gift them them the game, but they knew that it would happen. We were left with a Scouse sense of community, Costa Coffee and a touch of the vapours. The parents of both sets of players stood throughout in atmosphere of brotherly love. Even the inevitable songs which ‘dig out’ the portly element of the crowd were characterised by a concern for public health rather than a need to ridicule:’You’ll have to cut back on the sweeties, YOU’VE GOT TYPE 2 DIABETES’ was one that stood out, a line taken from Gaz Brookfield’s ‘Diabetes Blues.’

Thankfully the madness was soon augmented by the force and passion of Connor Mulvaney, who pulled a goal back before being unceremoniously withdrawn from the game. Sensing blood, Caversham turned the screw but Evan and the defence coped brilliantly until an unstoppable shot made the score 3-1 to the Arrows at the break.

The beginning of the second half was delayed by Darth Vader. The ref blew his whistle and Coach Michael, in full on Scouse, shouted ‘Sorry ref, I shoulda seen tha’ and attempted to remove Evan’s Star Wars hoodie from him. This was difficult as Evan isn’t prone to the realisation that something is happening which has a direct and immediate relevance to him, and in standard fashion he didn’t really raise his arms or generally roll with Michael’s efforts to alter garment plans.

Eventually the game was under way again and with Connor now in goal, it was difficult to see how poacher Evan would get the service to score. Caversham didn’t really have a chance of beating Connor in goal, and when he was released the team were able to lay siege to the reds’ goal for the final 10 minutes. The Arrows defended stoutly, however, but just as there were audible murmurings among their parents about the ref needing to blow his whistle and Waitrose probably filling up by now, their whole deck of cards collapsed. Firstly, Connor lashed a corner across the face of the goal, causing the ball to deflect off a defender and hit the back of the net: 3-3. Then, the industrious and clever Jack Parry saw a shot canon off the underside of the crossbar and onto the line. We would definitely settle for a point now, but with almost the last kick of the game, Mulvaney broke free and thumped it into the corner for a win, sending the Wokingham and Emmbrook congregation into raptures:

EMMBROOK, AMORE, STORIA DI UN GRANDE AMORE
Emmbrook, tale of a great love
BIANCO CHE ABBRACCIA IL NERO
White that embraces the black
TORO CHI SI ALZA DAVVERO PER TE
Bull that really stands up for you
PORTACI DOVE VUOI
Take us wherever you want.

The current price to cross the river between Pangbourne and Whitchurch is 60p; if it was down to me I would increase this to 80p immediately and then gauge if further increases would be viable. Cars shouldn’t be on the road so much these days anyway – if you’re local and want to walk or cycle into Oxfordshire or Berkshire, you can do so for free. Also, forget all the bollocks spoken about ‘leadership’; the dream job is to sit in the hut at the entrance to a car park or toll booth, reading, drinking coffee and chatting to drivers or pedestrians now and then if they feel like it.

Whitchurch villagers will have crossed the bridge at around 8:15 this morning as part of their very short journey to Prospect Park in Tilehurst. The club obviously have a very strict Covid-19 protocol, with parents required to wear masks and space themselves out across the length of the pitch. The referee had forgotten to arrive for the game so a large, gruff man wearing a pink Man Utd shirt and a ‘Southcote Colts’ jacket came over to give each team a pre-match speech and announce that he would be reffing the game. I’m not sure who he was affiliated with or where he came from exactly but he was there and sometimes that’s what’s important. He refereed in a very laid-back yet authoritative way. He had already taken a bit of grief from a couple of parents due to his shirt, and this helped to establish a relaxed tone to the game – a sort of negative charge. Fair play to him for being so relaxed and friendly, whoever he was.

Within a few moments of the game starting, Mason Ralph side-stepped a defender and clipped the ball into the top left corner. A goal from Connor Mulvaney soon followed, but Whitchurch began to fight back, prodding and probing in midfield to try to cultivate a meaningful rhythm to their play, but it didn’t work. Evan was on the bench in this half, as was Hayden Harris, who in a nonchalant and surly (yet ultimately well meaning) manner would convert four chances in the second half. Meanwhile, Whitchurch tried to salvage some hope and purpose from proceedings. ‘Where the fuck’s he come from?’ They had a really quick player who would suddenly emerge to scupper an attack, sprinting across the pitch in an effort, perhaps, to compensate for one or two of his less dynamic teammates. This showed great fortitude, and it should be emphasised that a scoreline of 12-0, while convincing, is also deceptive. There were aspects of Whitchurch’s play which militated against an even more devastating outcome, and these should be viewed with respect. A ten minute period in youth football can include 5 or 6 goals, perhaps as emotions become difficult to corral.

In the second half the surging waters of Wokingham’s attack – like the Thames governed by an unaccountable, thrusting and inexorable westward tide, or the Emmbrook abandoning the parameters of nature to shatter misconceived notions of its scale and potential destructiveness – collapsed the lingering dam of Whitchurch’s resistance, leading to a deluge of goals: liquid football. Hayden finished chance after chance, Kian Smith scored an absolute thunderbolt and with almost the last kick of the game, Evan curled a free-kick just inside the left post. It was great to see him score a free kick, as this is a strength he wasn’t able to develop at Bracknell last year because young Ronnie had priority.

As for Whitchurch, they could ponder, cogitate, move magnets around a magnetic board or hold a glass island post-mortem, tip tapping away on an ipad or tablet to try to impose some retrospective meaning on what transpired. Or they could find answers from a deeper source than the mind’s rationality, but how should they go about this? I wish them true success in their ongoing footballing pilgrimage.

‘They didn’t know where they were going, but there knew where they were wasn’t it.’ Wandering around Prospect Park, having dropped Evan off to walk with a friend, I did 3000 steps before eventually finding the pitch in a slight depression screened off by trees. The drive in to the park was very dodgy for a start, somehow resulting in being funnelled into a car boot sale. I could have displayed some unsaleable or fairly dubious items: Fulham shirts, empty Lucozade bottles, half-used ointments and grammar guides. I might as well have done, because the next half an hour was a passage of futility which brought me close to tears, to be honest. I checked the text directions: ‘From the main car park, follow the path down.’ This was a problem – which way? And how does the massive car boot sale car park relate to the main car park? ‘You will see a pitch on the right.’ On the right of where? ‘Go across the pitch.’ Well, the refs were checking studs and watches, communal prayers and team talks were over and the games were about to kick off…walking across a pitch could have incurred a fine or complaint to the league authorities from the taciturn of Tilehurst or the addled of Andover or whatever variety of the half dead were there. ‘Behind the trees there is another pitch’ – trees in every direction. ‘It’s fairly hidden from the path’…

The only strategy I could think of, as I knew we were supposed to be on Pitch 1, was to quickly ask a referee or volunteer if they knew where I needed to go. The first one said ‘Nightmare ennit. This is Pitch 1, I’m sure.’ I walked over to a guy beside the next pitch: ‘This is Pitch 1 mate – definitely.’ Options were limited now. I stopped pacing around and just accepted I’d have to go back to the car boot sale and maybe salvage something from there. Ambling along, I had one last scan of the park and realised there was actually only one significant path that ran through it and that the bigger portion of the park was indeed to the right of this path, though almost all of the pitches were to the left. Way over to the right was a significant group of oak trees and, just behind, a flash of orange. The game was obviously in progress, and I’d taken 35 minutes to locate it from the car park.

This was the first league game of the season and officially the first competitive game the team have ever played; they would now be playing for points and league positions, whereas in previous years league tables and records were only kept by the odd anorak parent. Caversham, a historic site of Christian pilgrimage and some well tended parks and gardens, as recognised as recently as 1770 in Thomas Whately’s Observations on Modern Gardening, is traditionally a place of Royalist sensibilities whereas Wokingham, attacked by Reading during the civil war, is generally Republican. I think it would be a mistake, though, to see today’s game as a recapitulation of that conflict. In fact, the parents were very quiet indeed – there were certainly no political or militaristic cries from those who crossed the river from Caversham or the flatlands from Wokingham to arrive in a field in Tilehurst at 8:30 am on a Saturday morning.

Instead, there seemed to be a quietly supportive energy surrounding the pitch. There was no-one shouting ‘Listen to the talk’, ‘You’re a muppet, lino’ or ‘We’ve gone quiet ent we boys’ – in fact, there was almost an other-wordly sense of calm. Games seem to alternate like that. Sometimes it feels like there’s something major brewing, as in the scene from Mike Bassett, England Manager when the England and Ireland teams arrive in an airport terminal building at the same time, and sometimes it feels like the brewing equipment just isn’t there. This was definitely in the latter category – Wokingham & Emmbrook played with a kind of nonchalance and assuredness on the ball, as if the voids in the pinball machine had been sealed for them by the Central Berkshire football gods, or something. Nearly everything they did worked, and nearly everything Caversham did faltered, but just slightly. It would seem almost unfair to single any Wokingham players out, but I would say that Kian Smith, returning after a season with the district team, dictated the tempo of the game brilliantly from defence, passing intelligently and driving forward with pace to catalyse attacks. Mason Ralph was also very lively up front, and without wishing to seem biased, new signings Harvey and Evan (both Fulham fans) linked up excellently in midfield before being substituted by spreadsheet at half-time. The coach recognised afterwards that the duo’s composure and range of passing were greatly missed in the second half and that he would have to think about re-evaluating the squad rotation policy in future weeks. That said, there were some excellent players on the bench, such as the marauding Connor Mulvaney, so perhaps equal game time for all is still the fairest compromise?

With two early goals from Mason Ralph, the game was seemingly over before it had really begun, though it has to be noted that defensively – midfield included – the team are far from a parked bus, with several recovery challenges suggesting that on a different day they may have been punished for hesitation and an element of sloppiness. Goalkeeper Leo Standing, though not quite the size and stature of Manuel Neuer, made some excellent saves and would have been a worthy man of the match if it wasn’t for young Ralph up front.

Overall, pre-match futility seemed to dissipate in the warmth of Tilehurst – and then again over toasties on the sun terrace opposite architectural salvage and an empty car park at the Costa del Showcase.

 

First half: Standing, Doyle, Uwannah, Newman, Smith, Saynor, Kimpton, Ralph, Ferguson-Newlove Subs: Mulvaney, Jackman, Webb

Second half: Standing, Doyle, Uwannah, Mulvaney, Jackman, Smith, Ralph, Ferguson-Newlove, Webb Subs: Kimpton, Saynor, Newman

 

 

 

The first friendly of the season was way up at the top of Woosehill. If you read ‘History of the Ashridge Exchange’, a convoluted document describing the genesis of the A329(M), you will realise that the Woosehill Estate became the biggest cul-de-sac in Europe due to council refusal to allow traffic to flow to the precious roads surrounding it, such as Reading (too urban) and Barkham (too rural). The false promise of an interchange was the basis for development; If people want to live in Woosehill, they should be content to be marooned and semi-isolated from long-standing Wokingham residents.

The top of Woosehill is the only place where you can find a degree of meaning and perspective. You can do a bit of forest bathing, touching base with the earth beneath ferns and variegated pylons. Witness bunting and a royal standard fluttering over the Chestnut Park archipelago. On the side of Rainbow Community Centre is the slogan ‘Life is a circle; enjoy the journey’. Enjoy the existential roundabout, take the second exit up to the play park and sit on a revolving disc as the game commences.

This was Evan’s first game back with Wokingham after a year at Bracknell Town disrupted by flooding and early curtailment of the season for obvious reasons. He was placed in centre midfield, reunited with buccaneering leitwolf Connor Mulvaney, with whom he had previously played for four seasons, and Peter Crouch-style striker Hayden Harris. Rangers’ first and only goal was a reprise of a former move in which Evan floats a ball in for Hayden – who has an aerial threat uncommon in players of this age – to bury at the far post. Also returning was the excellent Kian Smith, who had spent last season representing the district team.

As the game developed it became scrappier, interspersed with phases of good passing from each team. Unfortunately, I was at fault for the Oranges’ equalising goal having volunteered to be linesman (activity not posted to Strava to be picked up by the ‘Strava Wankers’ Twitter account, as happened last time). I spotted what was widely deemed to be a clear offside, but hesitated and didn’t raise the flag. The ball was soon in the net and it was too late. That’s why parents don’t generally volunteer as assistant referees – there’s enough material to intermittently niggle away at the mind all day as it is.

Woosehill’s ‘Life’s a circle; enjoy the journey’ is better, in my view, than ‘Discover Freemasonry’ or ‘Scouting and freemasonry: two parallel organisations’, as advertised outside the town hall in Wokingham. You may not be able to get out of Woosehill, other than via a fantastic network of concrete footpaths and woodland crossings, but perhaps you could also question why you might want to. If you do find a way out, rather than the Ashridge Interchange and the abandoned IDR, which is now a series of car parks leading to the library, you will now find a new road immediately parallel to the A329(M): the relief of the relief road, with houses alongside and little islands of winding paths carefully measured so that developers can advertise ‘the best in country living’ on 5 km of spaghetti trails leading to dead ends on every side and back to where you started.