Wilderspool Causeway

‘Reason I cancelled my trip to Woodley is that I’m not a big fan of the Obama administration allowing it to exist in an off location 4 miles from central Reading and contribute “peanuts” to our economy. Bad deal. Wanted me to lead the teams out – No!’ We had to invite Donald, though, because Evan’s sure there’s something underhand about Michael Wolff’s revelatory White House book and that it’s ‘undemocratic’ to allow a petition to affect his visit. It’s almost as if someone has bought Evan a subscription to a right of centre magazine for children which he loves reading every week.

Woodley United Cyclones. What a name and what a well turned-out team, resplendent in sky blue like Coventry City at their most stylish. Evan was due to play in goal and accepted the commission for the first time in about a year. It’s taken 3 years to recover from the debacle of Christmas 2014 when Aunt Marjorie and I independently bought him outsize goalie shirts, hers slightly too big but mine grossly so – to the extent that he only just fits into it and wore it today. It’s Gabor Kiraly era Fulham – Gabor Kiraly being the iconoclastic Hungarian who wears baggy grey tracksuit bottoms in goal and was signed by madman Felix ‘Cheese Rubber’ Magath.

In the warm up, Evan apparently pulled off a wonder save, diving up into the corner to tip the ball around the post – everyone was talking about it. In the game, though, he went for a difficult punch, flopped it and Woodley scored. Apparently this was very unlikely news. Fake news, even. They hadn’t scored for five weeks, according to one parent. Was this ‘strange news from another star’ – a miracle – or just randomly strange news like when you ask someone what happened to their unassuming son: ‘Oh, he’s at er, the…University of Strathclyde studying Equestrian Psychology. Or was it International Spa Management? It was joint honours, I think…’

Anyway, the pattern was that Wokingham & Emmbrook dominated possession and the chances, but couldn’t finish, whereas Woodley played economically, in straight lines across the Blockbusters grid rather than winding and meandering about. Actually it was more like Snakes and Ladders, but with fickle snakes. We went for the snakes, sometimes falling down them and sometimes climbing them to the next level, whereas Woodley played it straight, always going for the ladders but not always finding them.

In the second half, Evan was out of goal and situated at left back, nudging the ball around the defence and down the line, progressing into midfield as a catalyst for forward play, scoring one goal from close range and another direct from a corner after the keeper fumbled. Evan’s boots, though, were an ‘off’ colour – deep red rather than steely blue. As the half progressed, the Woodley players seemed to go down quite regularly with head injuries. Their excellent keeper hit the deck for a bit, as did a determined midfielder who was desperate to soldier on despite the manager’s beckonings from the touchline. He was not a happy bunny, reacting to the substitution like a Scot discovering that their cherished Irn-Bru recipe is soon to be tinkered with for good.

In some ways, we were lucky. Woodley were only a milliner’s yard away from succeeding at their more straightforward game, while our flair – always a double-edged sword – was eventually enough. The received wisdom is that ‘simple play’ is best. When I was younger, you kept the ball for more than two seconds and listened to the shrieks: ‘Get rid of it! Get out! Release! Don’t be selfish!’ It takes a long time for certain styles of play to ‘cross over’ from eccentricity to acceptability. Why is that? The same applies to the names of schools and institutions. Hawthorns, Chestnut, Willow, Acorn, Oak, Beech – fine. But why? Why not Pecan or Peanut, Seasoned Nuts Technical College, Cashew Nut Primary or Mixed Nuts Community College?

 

 

 

As it was the last game of the year, this post includes a statistical update prior to the inevitable reflections on missing beanie hats, scrappy football and the shadows of mortality etc:

Played 15 Won 8 Drawn 1 Lost 6

Goalscorers: C. Mulvaney: 17, H. Harris: 11, E. Saynor: 9, J. Dance: 7, J. Parry 4, M. Sexton 2, A. Mulvaney 6, O. Ferguson 1, C. Butler 1

 

Woodley has a transient population on Saturdays, but you can spot the residents hobbling around the precinct as if newly transported to the Isle of the Dead, lost in the realm of the becrutched but unable to navigate their way back to the dock to find an onward embarkation time. Instead, they are surrounded by confusing signs: ‘Tampa Bay Fish Fingers’, ‘Gravadlax-on-Thames’, ‘Highgate Road Walks and Washes.’ Maybe for them it feels like being a child again, slightly misinterpreting the central point of most conversations. On the way to the game, Evan said his teacher would be missing in the New Year because of ‘jewellery service: it’s where you go and chat with a judge for two weeks to see if he’s right.’

We were due to play Twyford on the neutral territory of Woodley Goals Centre, but if the name of the pitch – ‘Lokomotiv Stadion’ – represented reality, we’d have been off to Berlin on the Eurostar last Wednesday, arriving via Brussels and Cologne to board the Berlin- Warszawa Express, bound for a wander around the old town and Royal Castle before settling down for the 700 mile journey to Moscow, perhaps stopping in the birch forests of Belarus for a foggy friendly against AC Zhytkavichy Youth FC, avoiding the free-roaming bison from the ancient woodlands.

The game started and miraculously, it seemed, we were in the ascendancy. Connor seized the ball after only a few seconds and smashed it into the top corner: 1-0. What’s more, we seemed to have the game buttoned up. With Connor and Evan surging forward, Jack acted as a hinge between defence and attack, intercepting Twyford attacks and moving the play on skilfully. Twyford, for ever at a crossroads in life, rely on a fulcrum, a conduit through whom everything meaningful they create will pass. The problem, though, is that while their main man can play, he also hits the deck whenever possible, going down in instalments at the merest hint of contact: a typical modern day footballer. But we can’t be too critical, rising to every incitement; none of us is too far away from a Peter Buck moment in life, throwing yoghurt at an air steward before appearing at Uxbridge Magistrates Court the following morning to make amends.

With the score at 1-0, the Twyford maestro went down like power in a thunderstorm, plunging the first half into miserable darkness: penalty, surely. The ref blew his whistle and pointed, leading to the tangential thought: what would be the collective noun for penalty takers? It takes bottle, or in Twyford’s case, a dive. So what would we go for? A dive of penalty takers? A bottle? A Batty? A Waddle? Redemption for Chris: ‘England win the World Cup as their Waddle of penalty takers defeats Germany’s. Jake Livermore sends England into Russian raptures.’ Instead, though, it was a free-kick – which Twyford missed.

Half of the Comets seemed to struggle for dynamism, finding themselves caught in possession with regularity; Wokingham exploited this, particularly on the right side of midfield where Evan dispossessed the left back to fire the ball past the keeper at his near post twice in quick succession, the second goal a near replica of the first. With the score 5-0 at half-time, what could possibly go wrong in the second half?

When you have a big lead, surely you need to follow the example of Gillette and place a gigantic banner above the concourse at Waterloo Station, despite the fact that your closest rivals are Wilkinson Sword who can only work around the peripherique of shaving culture, adding a superfluous blade here and there in a plucky attempt to gain some traction in the market: still, don’t be complacent – tell London it’s game over.

Instead, with a revolutionised line up to maintain equality of game time, the veterans of the first half had to contend with the rhythms of new teammates, rhythms which were were retrogressive – atavistic, even – in nature; they swarmed around the ball, throwing composure and tactical shape to the four winds. It was a committed though generally hapless and misguided second half performance. When the first goal was slashed in off the boot of our own keeper, Clive wondered if the final score could genuinely be 6-5 to Twyford. A genuinely ridiculous display of ineptitude led to a second goal for Theresa’s boys after one of our defenders sent the ball spinning through the air behind his head and ultimately into the goal.

Thankfully, Hayden Harris, our junior Peter Crouch on blue smarties, raced away with the score at 5-3 to put a little more daylight between the teams. This was compromised , though, when further calamities made Clive a prophet: with 2 minutes to go, we were only 6-5 up and there was an epic goalmouth scramble to decide the game.

The ball bounced around in the box for what seemed like several minutes, with absolutely nobody in control of where it would end up. This culminated in probably the most unconstrained celebration we’ve ever been part of as eventually the ball broke loose to set Ciara Butler – a great defender but not by any means a common goal scorer – bounding up the pitch for a one on one with the keeper to settle the match: Could she? As the Twyford keeper assessed his options, Ciara just calmly tucked it underneath him to make the final score 7-5, undermining what would surely have been the greatest resurgence in the history of Twyford.

After the game, it was off to the Dog and Duck for a mid season convocation of coaches and assorted parents prior to a trip to the garden centre for another glimpse of a parallel dimension. ‘Oh, it’s Tom the Woodman’, they said. Eh? ‘Well you look exactly like Tom the Woodman, a man who works on site – we’d asked to see him.’

 

With Iris in tow (and in fine conversational form) we were in the territory of trying to eat Hula Hoops while wearing mittens and constantly speculating about the paths of planes and vapour trails in the sky above. She thought they might collide, and I wondered if Sandhurst’s Lord of the Skies Chris McCann had been trusted with a debut at Swanwick, a youngster off the bench and in control of the corridors. Other parents then expanded the scope of the conversation to include transport in general, asking Iris if she’d ever been on a boat: ‘No, because I might be eaten by crocodiles’ – I’m not sure they meant a boat on the Everglades though. As to where she imagined the planes were going, ‘to the airport’ drew a laugh, followed by the observation that ‘ghosts eat turtles and slugs.’ Again, a pragmatic response: ‘because they’re hungry.’

I could see the right side of the pitch, with Iris’ head blocking the left because she was chilly and insisted on maniacally gazing at me while being carried. The mission seemed to be to bounce back from last week’s fiasco when I was in charge and the team folded completely in the second half after dominating the first. The coaches must have got wind of my liberal tactics because at training on Tuesday I had never seen so many cones. There were cones everywhere, muddled rainbows of plastic to discipline the wayward and induce migraines in the susceptible. Transgression beyond your cones would lead to consequences – there was no way my  Latin/Central American ideas would be granted anything more than a temporary licence. I would suggest that Coaches Michael and Peter have a more Dutch ethos: creativity allied to organisation.

Reassuringly, normal service was resumed with the team’s signature error surfacing within five minutes of the start: radically absurd defending. In this case, the ball was drifting past the post until our goalkeeper rushed over and took a swipe at it to send it spiralling back towards goal and into the net. This was a team we could recognise and buy in to, making mistakes in a safe environment so as to learn from them at some unspecified future time.

Does the time come, though,  to stop making mistakes and start getting things right?  There’s a quote from Bill Clinton on the wall where I work: ‘If you live long enough, you’ll make mistakes. But if you learn from them, you’ll be a better person. It’s how you handle adversity, not how it affects you. The main thing is: never quit, never quit, never quit.’  But what if you make a mistake that’s decisive, leading to your impeachment? What can you really learn from that? Don’t lie on oath about illicit liaisons in your office?

The reason  gaffes are reassuring within a youth football game, though, is that they show the players aren’t playing ‘percentages’. It may seem silly to opt for a move which only has a 1 or 5% chance of success in favour of one with a 70 or 80 % success rate – but if they always picked the straightforward option, the harder skills would never be practised: a good decision can result in a negative outcome. That’s why the coaches never see the result as the main indicator of success or failure, prioritising the process even if it sometimes feels like nothing more than fine motor skills under mittens.

Wokingham & Emmbrook Oranges’ performances are usually as predictable as the reports delivered by bleary-eyed traffic correspondents on a Saturday morning: ‘Expect delays in and around Floyd Road prior to Charlton Atheltic’s game this afternoon. Traffic is also likely to be slow on the North Circular as the day unfolds. Lots of comings and goings at Heathrow Airport today, so avoid the area if you want to. As for other parts of the country, the M6 through Birmingham is looking like it’s ready for traffic and it’s advisable to avoid the pedestrianised areas of Manchester if you’re travelling by car this afternoon.  Back ‘in town’, Brentford Fountain Leisure Centre remains inaccessible from the Chiswick Flyover other than to particularly skilled parcourt practitioners…’

In Wokingham’s case, the ebb and flow of the game is characterised by the concession of at least one early goal followed by either a successful or unsuccessful revival. Having watched 70 games or so, I can’t recall one in which the team faded away in the second half; they tend to start the game having already faded away, gradually mobilising as the first half progresses. As I happened to be caretaker manager for the game, perhaps I have to look inwards and take stock. Coach Peter had given me carte blanche to dispense with his rotational wisdom and form the team and tactics in my own image, a permission made easier to accept given the fact that we had no substitutes because they were away in North Wales.

I therefore decided to loosen up the Christmas tree a bit, allowing players to attack or defend as they saw fit rather than to feel they have to keep doggedly to their shape. I felt a bit like Mark Hughes taking Dickson Etuhu for a walk in the Great Park, ambling up to the Copper Horse and climbing on the stones at the base to show him horizons he couldn’t see from down in the centre of the town. I didn’t mind if they were defensive players: they could get forward when we were in possession, as long as they got back when needed. The left and right midfielders had free rein to get up and down as they saw fit – the right to roam: our lone striker had to chase and press, giving no time or space to the Purley defence. With Evan at right-back, and free to get forward, he scored two goals, one of which was a free-kick and the other resulted from a hitherto unauthorised run forward in which he sidestepped a defender and smashed the ball on the half volley into the top corner. The adrenaline from the goal helped him attack and defend in equal measure. At 2-0 up, it was possible to feel like a whelk-stall owner in a ‘high demand for whelks’ area.

At half-time, though, one of our best midfielders had a monumental, unforeseeable breakdown. He screamed, collapsing under the force of his sobs because he hadn’t scored a goal. To make matters worse, he was due to be goalkeeper in the second half. The Purley manager, meanwhile, must have been giving it the full Pacino: ‘I made every wrong choice a middle aged man can make. I uh…pissed away all my money, believe it or not. I chased off anyone who has ever loved me. And lately, I can’t even stand the face I see in the mirror…We are in hell right now, gentlemen. Believe me. And we can stay  here and get the shit kicked out of us or we can fight our way back into the light. We can climb out of hell. We can CLAW with our fingernails…I CAN’T DO IT FOR YOU. I’m too old…’

Anyway, in the second half Purley blew us out of the water completely, shattering the efforts of the first half as we finally let go of the semblance of shape I’d encouraged them to keep at arms length in the first place. I could make excuses: the unexpected wobbly, the tiredness of a team which played at a high tempo with no subs to rely on, the ruthlessness of the opposition’s physical long-ball game, the inability of our players to adapt to new instructions. A famous bank collapsed due to unauthorised trading on the Osaka Securities Exchange; we lost it due to unauthorised defending in Woodford Park.

I was willing the team to get back on the front foot and not sit too deep once we’d conceded. Unfortunately, the players’ logic was ‘Can’t you see? We’ve just conceded! We need to defend!’ In the final analysis, I couldn’t get a clear message through to the players from half-time onwards and they therefore lacked direction. I’d go abroad and coach, but Woodley Interpol would track me down. I felt like a novitiate tyre fitter in the absence of  Chris ‘the saviour’ Edmunds, Wokingham’s finest, who would one day return to find the locking wheel nut, apply the sealant and fit the tyre. As Clive, Mark’s uncle, said at the end: ‘Come back Michael: all is forgiven.’

 

 

P.S. Evan then played for Wokingham Cougars in their cup match. I was so disillusioned that I didn’t watch, returning only near the end of the game to find out that Evan had scored the Cougars’ only goal against Caversham Trents and the game was heading for penalties. He then scored in the penalty shoot-out, but alas: the Trents won.

Another day ends,
another dollar made was spent,
cycle unloaded, passage cleared
and coffee passed across the chairs.
We wash our face

and move at a slowworm’s pace
across the foothills of our hopes,
spinning so fast we stay in one place;
losing breath, questioning our reach,
emerging from Arctic tundra sleep
beneath clouds on an alpine massif
or aloft above Greenland,
crossing the sea for humidity,
palm trees and beaches.

Climbing mountains, not conquering them,
as living ellipses in black hole slippage
measuring space between luminescences,
camping and cooking wherever the purchase,
the co-ordinate on the continuum.

A couple of years ago, Caversham’s intention was to ‘soften the streetscape’, to freshen up the village centre by throwing curveballs to the traffic. The Caversham and District Residents’ Association (CADRA) have looked to the work of Hans Monderman in Holland who has designed the town of Drachen to be unhelpful to motorists. Apparently, heightening uncertainty brings out drivers’ best manners and a sense of caution. If you minimise knowledge of whose right of way it is, reduce sightlines and hinder visibility then you encourage drivers to reach deep within and find their better selves: the people the good Lord made them to be. Pedestrian zones merge with the road, improving the public realm. Introduce a bit of chaos and the problem solving part of the mind kicks in to action.

‘Psychological traffic calming’: maybe it’s that sort of philosophy which guides the coaching of clubs like AFC Caversham and Wokingham & Emmbrook. Both clubs have a ‘DNA’ document which emphasises enjoyment, developing skill, time on the ball rather than a ‘get rid’ mentality, risk-taking, team work, the acceptability of mistakes, and the notion that making a good decision can lead to a negative outcome. The result is that players become comfortable on the ball, are not afraid to express themselves and eventually manage to outplay the long ball merchants or anyone who relies on a central bully.  Caversham take it a stage further; they want to see genuine cohesion and harmony within society. According to Point 4 of their constitution, they aim to ‘encourage friendship and comradeship amongst families associated with the club.’ Maybe they could help save relationships or tend to the wounds of the past, healing the environment. I’m sure they would agree with Damon Albarn’s words in Green Fields: ‘I was losing it all the time, but she stayed with me and found me out and above all else I’ve realised that it’s honesty that secures the bond in the heart.’

In their cherry red shirts, Caversham were as stylish and dignified as AFC Bournemouth from among the firs and pines.  They had a particularly effective deep-lying player who went by the name of ‘George’ and played a bit like Carlos Puyol, with luxuriant barnet to match. He was just slightly more cerebral than the average player, showing an understanding of when to arrive at a situation and when to let things run their course. This was a theme developed later in the day when a wiry boxing coach who looked like he had just emerged from a Jam concert he attended in 1981 decided to teach Evan a few moves and how to ‘discover your stance.’ As his loafer tassles flopped about, he explained that boxing is all about discipline and self-control rather than violence, equipping you with an awareness of when to step in and when to step back. Rather than attacking an inflatable Guinness promotion and thereby annoying the landlady of The Golden Lion, as he had been, Evan had a good old spar for 20 minutes and did indeed gain a bit of confidence. In the game earlier, he had to be withdrawn after 5 minutes due to breathing difficulties, returning for a second-half cameo in which he set up a consolation goal but struggled for breath.

On the motorway after the game, it was clear that his general enthusiasm and curiosity was unaffected: ‘Dad, where do you actually buy axes from?’ I wasn’t sure – garden centres? Homebase? But I did remember standing on a thinly populated platform at Earls Court station en route to Stamford Bridge with my sister and a man casually holding an axe alongside his paint-spattered tracksuit bottoms. I also remembered the rumour of a road leading out of Heston Services which acts  as a portal to another dimension, a more verdant outpost of metropolitan Middlesex and its humdrum notes of Calormen.

We couldn’t begrudge Caversham the victory, so well is it built on the footballing equivalents of floating foundations and masonry frost walls – it’s a kind of Arsenal of youth football, as are Wokingham & Emmbrook. We’ll stick to our principles no matter what, even if they sometimes fall short on a windy night in Stoke. I’m not sure it’s possible to bring about a better world in the South East of England where drivers make Cerys Matthews a perennial prophet, but don’t blame AFC Caversham or Matt Rodda MP if a revolution of kindness doesn’t quite happen in 2017.

 

 

 

There were rumours of problems on the A78 to the West of Kilmarnock. You would also have to watch yourself if you were out and about between Middlesbrough and Stockton-on-Tees, just to the north of Danish Mercia. Traffic issues seemed to abound between Strathclyde and Northumberland, dominating the kitchen soundscape while phones were abuzz with updates as to where Evan’s rearranged match would take place. To complicate matters further, ‘Energy in Northampton’ followed the traffic update, in homage to a town where aliens can find freedom.

It transpired that we would be playing in a constructed reality on the edge of Bracknell: an island of mud and ‘bright hygienic hell’ called Montague Park. We were supposed to be playing Purley in the BYDL Cup – not the Croydon Purley, but the Purley-on-Thames Purley who base themselves somewhere near Mapledurham or wherever. As with The Champions League, if you are dumped out of the BYDL cup you are placed in a lesser tournament: the ‘Plate.’  It’s always mildly embarrassing to play in the Plate, so teams seem to interpret it as a refiner’s fire from which they hope to emerge stronger than ever before, purged of vanity yet tougher and purer of collective spirit. So it’s often a blessing in disguise to lose a cup match and be bumped off into the Plate. But what if you lose in the Plate too? How would shame reassemble itself in a completely new competition, and why not keep the tableware theme going? How about the Binfield Saucer, the Sindlesham Mill Napkin holder or the Hogwood Industrial Estate Ornamental Gravy Boat? The White Waltham Jug? ‘We’re in the Pangbourne Cake Fork this week lads. Let’s show them we mean it. Better play well or we’ll be in the Bagshot Vital Rectangle next week.’  And why not involve colanders?

Everything should just keep going with teams bombed out all over the place until they win a trophy. It’s always meaningful to win something, however obscure. My favourite example in the literary world is that of J.L. Carr who set up the Ellerbeck Literary Award in 1972 ‘consisting of a non-transferable meat token for one pound of best steak and a copy of Carr’s novel The Harpole Report. The prize was awarded at ‘infrequent intervals’ and sent to writers he admired – but they would have to travel to Kettering to redeem the token.

By the time we got to the dodgy new development, it was difficult to form coherent thoughts; I’m sure this applied to everyone who was there. To make matters worse, I was also asked to ref the game in the absence of an official. I did an FA refereeing qualification as a youngster, but only passed ‘in theory’, i.e. though I passed every element of the test I was not eligible to be a referee in practice. I remember taking 5 minutes to make an offside call on a board of magnets and the assessor saying, perhaps as an improvised prophecy: ‘You’re not actually looking to referee matches, are you? You just want to learn about the game, don’t you. You won’t actually be reffing – it’s not for you, is it. In a real match you’d have to be a little bit quicker with the old decision making my friend.’

Anyway, reffing Evan’s game was deeply frustrating, particularly as it transpired that we were not actually facing Purley but another team from a higher league, and Evan’s peers: Wokingham & Emmbrook Rangers. There is no team you want to beat more than one made up of friends and peers. The game would live on in the playgrounds and dining queues of Emmbrook. Crisp weekend walks would be fraught with danger; Cubs would be awful. Dads you used to be on nodding terms with would look away in anguish. But to referee a game like that? A prophet is without honour in his own country: a terrible ref, even more so.

I could feel the Rangers’ parents eyes on me: ‘Why the f*** is he reffing, they seemed to say. My philosophy was to ‘let the game flow’, partly because I wasn’t exactly ‘fresh’ from watching Gareth Richards’ excellent performance of Idiot Wind the night before and partly because there are so many strange rules at this level that I couldn’t remember them. The thing I could remember for sure was that when someone scores, you blow the whistle and point to the centre circle to confirm the goal stands. At other times, ‘letting the game flow’ backfired – wincing is not the same as blowing the whistle. My first mistake occurred when peripheral vision alerted me to the prospect of a slumped Ranger labouring over his shoelaces. Rather than stopping the game to let him finish – which I thought would be silly – I allowed him to plough on, fingers losing out to wet laces. Eventually he was back up and in the game, but then Evan’s laces fell. What could I do? There was no way I could stop the game now I’d set a precedent, so I had to whisper ‘Evan, just stop and do your laces up’, but he wouldn’t,  instead offering a subtle nod towards the Rangers goal as if to ask how exactly he would score if he was down among the threads. Then, an opposition dad (a Brentford fan but a fine man ) shouted ‘Alex, Evan’s laces are undone.’ Thankfully, the laces of the recently slumped Ranger had relapsed, meaning I could blow the whistle and the teams could re-tie in tandem.

Meanwhile, one of the opposition dads was really annoying me. He’s a ‘pillar of the community’ type to whom nothing is more objectionable than a conspicuous display of skill. ‘Keep it simple. No flashy skills’, he’ll say. His guiding principle is that of ‘mucking in.’ But if you muck in too much, or too little: look out. He ‘mucks in’ to the optimum level: enough to be the leader while keeping the ‘humility box’ well and truly tricked. All bases covered in life. ‘Not sure about this, not sure about that, not impressed by the other, stay down, don’t be showy’, but when his own son takes it around two players and  sticks it in the top corner? Have a death stare, ref, strolling around in the middle like you’re the big man.

As far as the game went, it was hard to assess while watching the ball and scanning the laces. I would much rather have been in among the brethren who have watched upwards of 70 games together (Andrew, Elias, Claire, Ian, Clive and Jane), where at least a few honest words can be said by now. Objectively speaking,  it was a good win against a supposedly better team but I was much more concerned with the social climate of the game which seemed to dictate that in no circumstances should anything of real feeling be expressed verbally. It made me wonder if sports gatherings and organised events of many types are primarily forms of censorship, suppression and distraction  though I admit that might be slightly too Marxist an interpretation of an Under 9s football match. It would have been much better to stay home and listen to traffic reports. Roll on the vintage tea trolley and the bone china.

 

After much debate about the nature of the moon this week, chiefly between Evan and his friend Sophie, we arrived in the Silesian portion of Woodley on a day supposedly destined to see the moon in its full glory.

‘Look’, observed Sophie. ‘It’s a full moon!’
‘No it’s not’ replied Evan, patiently. ‘It’s a waxing crescent.’

I had no idea if it was waxing or waning, but it certainly wasn’t full. Further enquiry confirmed this – it was waxing gibbous.

As a welcome change, we were back at the Woodley Goals Centre where Evan has played the bulk of his games so far. His sister Iris is generally thought to offer good vibes and motivation, but unfortunately she had made herself unavailable for today’s outing due to a clash with Jethro’s party. When I saw the invite, I imagined her on the road to Truro, ready to celebrate the great Cornishman. It transpired, though, that the Jethro in question is an associate from pre-school and that instead of an odyssey to the west of Bodmin, she was bound for Junglemania.

As mentioned, Evan’s game happened to be in Woodley’s Silesia, awarded to Poland after the Potsdam Agreement of 1945. To enter an outpost of Slavia is a real privilege. There should be more international enclaves in Berkshire, celebrating allies and former enemies in equal measure. The Lower Sorbians call the area Slazynska, while the Slovaks call it Sliezsko; the Polish Slavists stick with ‘Silesia’, believing the word to be directly related to the Old Slavic words ‘sleg’ and ‘slag’, meaning ‘dampness.’  There are also Czech Silesian Slavs who no doubt have their own interpretation of where they’re from and how to say it, but perhaps that’s a question for another day. I could mention Pavel Nedved, but he’s really from the Northern Austro-Bavarian dialect area of East Franconia. It would be nice to think that Wokingham would be playing on land known  to Karel Poborsky, the ultimate Czech flair player, but he’s from South Bohemia, near the Vltava river.

This morning, tactical architect Coach Peter circulated a memo of almost transcendent indecipherability, recalling the prodigious exploits of Will Hunting alone with a blackboard, if not the deranged collages of mathematician John Nash in ‘A Beautiful Mind.’ He studies the game academically and as a tax specialist, has a baffling knowledge of formulae. As a player, he scored in AFC Wimbledon’s first ever game and as a 5-a-side player he is perhaps the most direct I’ve played with, combining physical aggression with great deftness of touch. When coaching, though, he offers options, encourages mistakes, provides routes to recovery, prefers creativity to safety and would rather the team play high quality football  and lose than win by gambling.

On a newly resurfaced pitch, Calcot played agriculturally. They placed a big lump of a lad up front and a hefty chap in goal as the twin poles of their play. Simple reference points would guide their progress through the game. That’s not to say they were a bad side: their game had been distilled. Why complicate the game? Why take 10 steps to get to the opponent’s goal when you could take 3? Some would argue that it’s because you need to take the extra steps in order to develop good technique: the counter argument is that the definition of skill is ‘minimum effort for maximum effect’, so why not be direct?

Wokingham  play the purist’s game, albeit very impurely at times. The first two Ikea goals resulted from catastrophic defending linked to the principle of ‘playing out from the back.’ The first one was an own goal after the goalkeeper’s pass bounced off a defender and the second was a crazy, entirely avoidable defensive misunderstanding: that’s the price you pay for never launching the ball through the air. Is it a price worth paying?

Hayden Harris then scored two very good goals to level the scores before possibly the worst refereeing decision I’ve seen at this level. Thanasis Xanthoulis found a winding route across the opposition penalty box, as if he was a contestant on Blockbusters, before side footing the ball into the goal as he was pushed over by a reckless Calcotician. So he scored, but was fouled in the process. And what did the youngster with the whistle do? Award a penalty. And did we score it? No. Calcot then went down the other end and scored a goal themselves: 3-2 at half-time. I know the refs are learning, but when they’re being paid £40-50 to do so then it’s not unreasonable to expect a degree of alertness. Too many of the lads seem to roll out of bed and mark time, barely seeing the action through their perms.

With Evan and Connor introduced in the second half, Wokingham continued to dominate possession and were resilient when roughed up, scoring from two set pieces as they pushed forward in numbers. My highlight of the game arrived when Evan received the ball on the right hand side and scored one of his best goals ever as he unleashed a thunderbolt across the goal and into the top corner.

Ultimately, thoughtful football prevailed over the pragmatic offerings of Calcot. It could have been the other way around, though, as best exemplified by the most direct teamtalk I’ve ever heard, delivered to a team who were trailing 2-0 but went on to win 4-2: ‘See those posts over there? Kick the f***ing ball through them.’ How you get there’s up to you. Silesia, gibbous moons – whatever.