R & R
The first shafts of day have yet to enlighten GL2 as Father Jones arrives at The Home of Football, optimistically sporting full coaching regalia despite the team’s fine victory at Bisham Abbey last week. Anxious to catch The Chairman’s eye with a splash of youthful enthusiasm (everything’s relative) and apparel which is several notches above the present incumbents of the GPSFA dugout (not difficult), barely a detail’s been missed or a lace out of kilter as his push for a place on ‘The List’ gathers momentum.
The Chairman’s not in evidence though, as he’s soaking up the non-existent sun in downtown Porthmadog, a North Walian town best known for its heritage railway and award-winning restaurants. His three-day sojourn will feature, amongst other fairly regular subsistence breaks, four substantial lunches and five a la carte dinners, and while this may initially appear mathematically illogical, in the words of El Supremo himself, ‘If 3-4-5 was good enough for Pythagoras, it’ll work perfectly well for me.’ And as this paragraph contains some pretty historic numbers, should The Chairman read it on more than zero occasions, Father Jones will be a shoe-in for the immediately-vacated managers’ position, fancy-dan tracksuit and screw-in studs or not.
The Chef arrives with the milk at 7.25am, Team VBJ having transformed a school field into the GPSFA stadium in record time according to the resident verifier from the Guinness Book of Records (Gloucester version). Sensing the urn has just boiled and the bacon’s in the pan, The Groundsman puts in an impromptu early-morning appearance - his recent reversal seemingly having had limited impact on his staple diet, which has remained pretty consistent for the previous ninety two and a half years.
In attendance too this morning are Father & Son Gore (GPSFA 2015/16), who make the first indent in the newly-arrived bobble hat delivery; woolly items which see Gloucester City FC match GPSFA in terms of both colour and design, though sadly nowhere near in terms of either performance or results. Getting the second consignment of yellow & black headwear just as the sub-zero temperatures of recent times are replaced by a mid-February Indian summer seems a masterstroke from the Commercial Manager, meaning another order for the onset of 2019/20 will be rendered completely unnecessary.
The Groundsman’s also attempting to get himself into the big red record book by taking the best part of three hours to untangle the perimeter rope and using a record number of Anglo-Saxon mutterings in the process. Coach Stalley lends him a helping hand, using the therapeutic over-under, over-under repetition to invent a brand-new warm-up session, having left his FA tablet at the golf club after over-celebrating a record of his own yesterday afternoon. Thirty five over par may not be everyone’s idea of success, but as we all know, achievement in any walk of life is very much a personal thing.
Slider is missing from today’s team sheet due to an injury picked up attempting long division at school; proof if ever any were needed of the dangers, both real and imagined, of indulging in ‘chunking’ of any description. Upton St Leonards, you need to change your methods. While Slider’s quality and versatility are big misses for the team, the biggest issue of all is that the percentage of GPSFA players wearing proper black boots has suddenly reduced from 36% to 30%, which is a hugely concerning decline.
Also nursing an injury is Wasp, but whether the buzzer’s impressive facial scar was caused by an exchange with a long division calculation, a visit from that scary man on the ‘Direct Line’ advert, or following the rest of his swarm into the spotlessly clean, but therefore completely invisible King’s School refectory window, is anyone’s guess.
Walk-on completed, Newbury completely dominate the opening quarter of our Cotswold League fixture and only a typically great High Definition save, a typically brave Iron Man tackle in the six-yard box and the width of a (typical) crossbar prevent the Berkshire team taking the lead. Coach Stalley has broad shoulders and accepts full responsibility for the lacklustre opening, the missing #FAWU60 having been replaced by an off-the-cuff round of skipping followed by two further drills of similar content – and the result, as they say, is history.
The Real Manager’s made the short trip from dog show to programme box having denied the furry one a clear round by personally destroying jump number three in the opening run, only for the dog to redress the balance by leading the handler round run number two to register a ‘clear’. On the bench, Slider begins to direct operations on the field with a fair degree of alacrity and more than a modicum of tactical awareness, an emerging talent that will provide FJ with a fair degree of competition should The Chairman ever switch his PC on. Both the paragraph’s Role Reversals turn out to be spookily successful.
From the moment WC crosses for Obieri to net Gloucester’s first (Slider’s coaching yell: ‘Get it over’), the momentum shifts completely and two pinpoint free kicks from Burgess (Slider’s coaching yell: ‘Shoot!’) soon extend the lead to three. When Jones peels away to head Burgess’s corner back across goal for Obieri to larrup home from around three yards out (Slider’s coaching yell: ‘Yeeeesssssss!!’), it’s hard to believe the difference between the first fifteen minutes and the second fifteen, though the coach-cum-linesperson is keeping his distance in case the fickle finger of blame finds its intended target.
Slider offers some eruditely phrased half time suggestions based vaguely around ‘Revitalise & React’ and Gloucester continue to press forward from the resumption, Obieri adding two more notches to his ever-burgeoning tally chart and Kirk (Douglas) helping himself to a very well taken hat trick. Rodgers nets a last-minute consolation for the visitors with a fine header that HD can do nothing at all about, not that this makes any difference whatsoever to his downbeat end-of-game demeanour. A right and proper goalkeeper’s reaction to the late loss of that hugely-coveted clean page.
‘A game of two halves’ has been upstaged by ‘a match of four quarters’, three of them very good, but the post-match ‘Reflect & Respond’ suggests a repeat of the first any time soon might just result in bad things happening.
The Black & Yellow Patio Crowd (though PC may not be entirely correct on this occasion) is in good spirits however, with Captain Scott Daniels & Robert the Roofer Amundsen posing at will for another Explorers’ photo, but The Lens has sensed gold elsewhere and is off filming the Afan Nedd squad, management, spectators and anyone else likely to part with a dollar, which means he’s nowhere to be seen. The French Connection to Blighty has returned safe and well, while Sherlock is as happy as she would be on any Murder Mystery Weekend, as May Day has well and truly arrived two and a half months early. Father Hundred Per Cent Burgess has successfully filmed the action while again balancing precariously but successfully on a single gym-strengthened leg and Mother of Mother Brown has got away with wearing an extraordinarily long magenta-coloured bobble hat without attracting a single comment from the assembled throng. Well, not an audible comment anyway.
WC is thrilled as he’s received the prestigious ‘Myatt of the Match’ award, with Holly Myatt, if she’d been in attendance, in second place. Six miles to the east in Tivoli Villas, and despite the hole in the roof causing a hugely annoying drip-drip-drip into the already half-full bucket after seven whole days without any noticeable rain, Miss Bussey feels a warmness in her heart and a tingling in her toes without having the faintest idea why her nervous system should be reacting in this rather strange way. Potential spontaneous combustion comes to mind, meaning the half-full bucket might well turn out to be pretty useful after all.
Clearly inspired, WC’s number five shirt is dropped in the big blue bag the right way out for the first time this season, though just as Measles transfers easily from one person to another, so does Laundry-ness and the number two jersey, worn oddly by WC’s christian namesake is later picked out with both arms tucked in and a bevy of cross-stitch where the Gloucester badge really should be.
In the pavilion, Vice Chairman MacDonald has returned to the kitchen after three months out with an ankle injury, or so he’s told The Chef. The Fryer himself has been in energetic mood throughout the morning, haring over to the Community Centre when the water stops working, before nipping off to the depot to replace the big red bottle that’s now full of oxygen rather than proper cooking gas. In between, he rustles up a chicken burger for Obieri, who spends the first ten minutes of his post-match meal painstakingly removing the feathers. Four weeks ago Chef turned up with a boxful of Stol(l)en Ones (which they probably were), with the sell-by date oddly having been erased with an indelible black marker. Both Burgess’s and Caple’s furrowed brows, staring eyes and downturned mouths, having ‘tried’ the bite-sized cubes of confectionery, suggest the fact that no-one’s eaten any is more to do with their (lack of) longevity than the fact that marzipan palates went out of fashion circa 1975.
The Yellows are entertaining South Walians Afan Nedd (Port Talbot & Neath) for the first-time ever and following doubles from JK (Rowling) and Aston (Villers), together with singles from Fisher and Mulraney, Coach Wixey’s smile is as wide as the gaps in Coach Harris’s grammatical understanding. Not so happy is The Photographer however, whose attempts to flog squad photos to supporters of teams on the wrong end of 1-9 and 2-6 scorelines has met with what can euphemistically be described as a reticence to purchase.
It’s been a day when R & R has been to the fore. But whether it’s Revitalise & React, Robert the Roofer, Role Reversal or Reflect & Respond, it’s time to get some real R & R under our belts before the three-day tour to London. Orpington B on Tuesday then.
Gloucester: High Definition; Mother Brown, Iron Man, Vespula Vulgaris; Myatt of the Match, Titus Oates, El Capitano, Lettuce; The Determinator; Issur Danielovitch. Physiotherapist & Tactician: Slider. Former Warm-Up Merchant: Stalley.
The Chairman’s not in evidence though, as he’s soaking up the non-existent sun in downtown Porthmadog, a North Walian town best known for its heritage railway and award-winning restaurants. His three-day sojourn will feature, amongst other fairly regular subsistence breaks, four substantial lunches and five a la carte dinners, and while this may initially appear mathematically illogical, in the words of El Supremo himself, ‘If 3-4-5 was good enough for Pythagoras, it’ll work perfectly well for me.’ And as this paragraph contains some pretty historic numbers, should The Chairman read it on more than zero occasions, Father Jones will be a shoe-in for the immediately-vacated managers’ position, fancy-dan tracksuit and screw-in studs or not.
The Chef arrives with the milk at 7.25am, Team VBJ having transformed a school field into the GPSFA stadium in record time according to the resident verifier from the Guinness Book of Records (Gloucester version). Sensing the urn has just boiled and the bacon’s in the pan, The Groundsman puts in an impromptu early-morning appearance - his recent reversal seemingly having had limited impact on his staple diet, which has remained pretty consistent for the previous ninety two and a half years.
In attendance too this morning are Father & Son Gore (GPSFA 2015/16), who make the first indent in the newly-arrived bobble hat delivery; woolly items which see Gloucester City FC match GPSFA in terms of both colour and design, though sadly nowhere near in terms of either performance or results. Getting the second consignment of yellow & black headwear just as the sub-zero temperatures of recent times are replaced by a mid-February Indian summer seems a masterstroke from the Commercial Manager, meaning another order for the onset of 2019/20 will be rendered completely unnecessary.
The Groundsman’s also attempting to get himself into the big red record book by taking the best part of three hours to untangle the perimeter rope and using a record number of Anglo-Saxon mutterings in the process. Coach Stalley lends him a helping hand, using the therapeutic over-under, over-under repetition to invent a brand-new warm-up session, having left his FA tablet at the golf club after over-celebrating a record of his own yesterday afternoon. Thirty five over par may not be everyone’s idea of success, but as we all know, achievement in any walk of life is very much a personal thing.
Slider is missing from today’s team sheet due to an injury picked up attempting long division at school; proof if ever any were needed of the dangers, both real and imagined, of indulging in ‘chunking’ of any description. Upton St Leonards, you need to change your methods. While Slider’s quality and versatility are big misses for the team, the biggest issue of all is that the percentage of GPSFA players wearing proper black boots has suddenly reduced from 36% to 30%, which is a hugely concerning decline.
Also nursing an injury is Wasp, but whether the buzzer’s impressive facial scar was caused by an exchange with a long division calculation, a visit from that scary man on the ‘Direct Line’ advert, or following the rest of his swarm into the spotlessly clean, but therefore completely invisible King’s School refectory window, is anyone’s guess.
Walk-on completed, Newbury completely dominate the opening quarter of our Cotswold League fixture and only a typically great High Definition save, a typically brave Iron Man tackle in the six-yard box and the width of a (typical) crossbar prevent the Berkshire team taking the lead. Coach Stalley has broad shoulders and accepts full responsibility for the lacklustre opening, the missing #FAWU60 having been replaced by an off-the-cuff round of skipping followed by two further drills of similar content – and the result, as they say, is history.
The Real Manager’s made the short trip from dog show to programme box having denied the furry one a clear round by personally destroying jump number three in the opening run, only for the dog to redress the balance by leading the handler round run number two to register a ‘clear’. On the bench, Slider begins to direct operations on the field with a fair degree of alacrity and more than a modicum of tactical awareness, an emerging talent that will provide FJ with a fair degree of competition should The Chairman ever switch his PC on. Both the paragraph’s Role Reversals turn out to be spookily successful.
From the moment WC crosses for Obieri to net Gloucester’s first (Slider’s coaching yell: ‘Get it over’), the momentum shifts completely and two pinpoint free kicks from Burgess (Slider’s coaching yell: ‘Shoot!’) soon extend the lead to three. When Jones peels away to head Burgess’s corner back across goal for Obieri to larrup home from around three yards out (Slider’s coaching yell: ‘Yeeeesssssss!!’), it’s hard to believe the difference between the first fifteen minutes and the second fifteen, though the coach-cum-linesperson is keeping his distance in case the fickle finger of blame finds its intended target.
Slider offers some eruditely phrased half time suggestions based vaguely around ‘Revitalise & React’ and Gloucester continue to press forward from the resumption, Obieri adding two more notches to his ever-burgeoning tally chart and Kirk (Douglas) helping himself to a very well taken hat trick. Rodgers nets a last-minute consolation for the visitors with a fine header that HD can do nothing at all about, not that this makes any difference whatsoever to his downbeat end-of-game demeanour. A right and proper goalkeeper’s reaction to the late loss of that hugely-coveted clean page.
‘A game of two halves’ has been upstaged by ‘a match of four quarters’, three of them very good, but the post-match ‘Reflect & Respond’ suggests a repeat of the first any time soon might just result in bad things happening.
The Black & Yellow Patio Crowd (though PC may not be entirely correct on this occasion) is in good spirits however, with Captain Scott Daniels & Robert the Roofer Amundsen posing at will for another Explorers’ photo, but The Lens has sensed gold elsewhere and is off filming the Afan Nedd squad, management, spectators and anyone else likely to part with a dollar, which means he’s nowhere to be seen. The French Connection to Blighty has returned safe and well, while Sherlock is as happy as she would be on any Murder Mystery Weekend, as May Day has well and truly arrived two and a half months early. Father Hundred Per Cent Burgess has successfully filmed the action while again balancing precariously but successfully on a single gym-strengthened leg and Mother of Mother Brown has got away with wearing an extraordinarily long magenta-coloured bobble hat without attracting a single comment from the assembled throng. Well, not an audible comment anyway.
WC is thrilled as he’s received the prestigious ‘Myatt of the Match’ award, with Holly Myatt, if she’d been in attendance, in second place. Six miles to the east in Tivoli Villas, and despite the hole in the roof causing a hugely annoying drip-drip-drip into the already half-full bucket after seven whole days without any noticeable rain, Miss Bussey feels a warmness in her heart and a tingling in her toes without having the faintest idea why her nervous system should be reacting in this rather strange way. Potential spontaneous combustion comes to mind, meaning the half-full bucket might well turn out to be pretty useful after all.
Clearly inspired, WC’s number five shirt is dropped in the big blue bag the right way out for the first time this season, though just as Measles transfers easily from one person to another, so does Laundry-ness and the number two jersey, worn oddly by WC’s christian namesake is later picked out with both arms tucked in and a bevy of cross-stitch where the Gloucester badge really should be.
In the pavilion, Vice Chairman MacDonald has returned to the kitchen after three months out with an ankle injury, or so he’s told The Chef. The Fryer himself has been in energetic mood throughout the morning, haring over to the Community Centre when the water stops working, before nipping off to the depot to replace the big red bottle that’s now full of oxygen rather than proper cooking gas. In between, he rustles up a chicken burger for Obieri, who spends the first ten minutes of his post-match meal painstakingly removing the feathers. Four weeks ago Chef turned up with a boxful of Stol(l)en Ones (which they probably were), with the sell-by date oddly having been erased with an indelible black marker. Both Burgess’s and Caple’s furrowed brows, staring eyes and downturned mouths, having ‘tried’ the bite-sized cubes of confectionery, suggest the fact that no-one’s eaten any is more to do with their (lack of) longevity than the fact that marzipan palates went out of fashion circa 1975.
The Yellows are entertaining South Walians Afan Nedd (Port Talbot & Neath) for the first-time ever and following doubles from JK (Rowling) and Aston (Villers), together with singles from Fisher and Mulraney, Coach Wixey’s smile is as wide as the gaps in Coach Harris’s grammatical understanding. Not so happy is The Photographer however, whose attempts to flog squad photos to supporters of teams on the wrong end of 1-9 and 2-6 scorelines has met with what can euphemistically be described as a reticence to purchase.
It’s been a day when R & R has been to the fore. But whether it’s Revitalise & React, Robert the Roofer, Role Reversal or Reflect & Respond, it’s time to get some real R & R under our belts before the three-day tour to London. Orpington B on Tuesday then.
Gloucester: High Definition; Mother Brown, Iron Man, Vespula Vulgaris; Myatt of the Match, Titus Oates, El Capitano, Lettuce; The Determinator; Issur Danielovitch. Physiotherapist & Tactician: Slider. Former Warm-Up Merchant: Stalley.
