First Leg
Thursday
With staging the First Leg of the Wycombe semi final double-header at Longlevens on a Friday afternoon as close to a logistical impossibility as you can get, Brendon at the University has come to our rescue and rescheduled the annual 3G pitch MOT and Service to allow us to play at Oxstalls and booked us a couple of disinfectant-clean changing rooms into the bargain. Karl at the Tennis Centre has sorted us a place to eat (which we don’t ultimately use) and the finer points of the event arrangements are agreed with visitors Wycombe. The ref’s been sorted and Coach Stalley’s got his cones and discs at the ready to highlight the startlingly dull blue lines that demarcate the centre’s 9-a-side pitch. The programme’s been printed, but as it’s a double-weekend issue, it’ll be easier to sell it next Saturday. Transporting the matchday kiosk from the Home of Football to Oxstalls might have proved to be somewhat problematic.
With Storm Gareth replacing the recently blown out Storm Freya Boucher, The Potteries are being lashed and the water-resistant properties of the black & yellow GPSFA showerproof are being well and truly put to the test. Meanwhile, around a hundred miles south at Norton Centre of Excellence, Miss Bussey is beside herself (with joy). She’s just received a letter from Mother Myatt, saying that WC will be leaving school early on Friday afternoon and she can’t hide her excitement at what she tells everyone within earshot is, ‘Starting the weekend an hour and a half early.’ High Definition’s leaving early too, much to her obvious disappointment, but in a life full of sacrifices, you have to accept a little bit of collateral damage along the rocky road to paradise.
Friday
The M6 is largely traffic free, the programmes are collected (ready for next week) and the Tesco chicken nuggets and Irish pork sausages are bought, cooked and container-ed. The kit, footballs and food are stacked high in the car and Wycombe are on the A40, heading unerringly west towards Glaws.
The nice people of Norton and Upton St Leonards are first to arrive, Full English of Elmbridge is last and everyone else is somewhere in between. Slider has painted out the white ‘I’m back’ ticks on his rather fetching black boots, while WC’s bright red slippers would be things of real beauty if he wasn’t going to play football in them. Fieldhouse is changed and ready for action eons before anyone else, though the same can’t be said of Obieri, who churns out a sentence or ten after the addition of each item of clothing or equipment. It’s a case of right shin pad – talk – left shin pad – talk – right sock – talk – left sock – talk – you get the drift.
The warm-up is focussed and with Coach Stalley otherwise engaged putting the final pitch cones in place, there is a profound lack of skipping, meaning HD is thrilled to the core, but is far too nice to say so.
Gloucester start the quicker with Burgess and Full English taking control of the central midfield area, while Myatt and Fieldhouse are linking well down the flanks. Ten minutes in and it’s 1-0, Burgess playing in Obieri who lifts the ball over the onrushing keeper.
The hosts continue to enjoy more of the possession but can’t add a second, while Slider, Iron Man and Vespula Vulgaris look in command in the city back line. McCaffrey however comes within millimetres of a leveller, his well struck free kick coming back off the underside of the bar before being cleared to safety.
We have a new (proper) physio in the home ranks today and Fieldhouse, desperate to be treated by someone who actually knows what they’re doing, collapses in a heap after 23 minutes in order to get some TLC from a qualified professional. ‘Nobody gave me any proper attention when I feigned concussion last week,’ moans Iron Man, but few are listening as everyone else is trying to work out how they can ‘Do a Fieldhouse’ without anyone with a badge realising what they’re really up to.
Momentum is maintained as the second half gets underway and five minutes in, Kirk (Douglas) puts in an excellent left wing cross and Myatt steals in to double the advantage. A penalty box foul on the rampaging Obieri results in a spot kick that’s emphatically tucked away by Burgess, though Iron Man doesn’t see the result as he can’t bring himself to watch.
Another indiscretion, just outside the area this time, but Burgess again engineers the very same outcome in the very same corner. Some lax defending gives Wycombe the opportunity to reduce the arrears, but more good work from Myatt and more great footwork from Obieri restores the four-goal cushion.
Obieri now takes it upon himself to further upset the Wycombe back line before completing his treble with a drive that contains anger, belief and creativity in equal measure – a real ABC of a goal. Unfortunately, F100%B’s all-seeing technological eye momentarily freezes for the second week running and youtube is denied an alphabetical treat.
With free kicks becoming all the rage, Selleck follows up Jankovic’s effort to grab the visitors’ second, before Wasp completes the tally by driving home a loose ball from outside the box into what has, in the last twenty minutes, become universally known as Burgess Corner. All we need now is Archie’s Divot and we’ll have a biblically challenged BC to AD.
It’s been a great performance from beginning to end and a second half that’s seen virtually every shot turn to gold. There was creativity and work rate down the flanks and through the middle, but the Vye-Caple-Freeman combination with Jones sitting just in front made for a steadfast defensive line which was at the core of tonight’s success.
The Photographer has missed most of the action though, as following a simple arithmetic calculation, he determined that he had more chance of raking in a few bob from the upmarket audience at the sports hall netball event than the 51 hardy souls gathered behind the 3G railing, so he’s spent only fifteen minutes at the footy. He goes home thinking we’ve won 1-0.
The lovingly prepared Tesco chicken nuggets and Irish pork sausages go down like a lead balloon, though the half price chocolate mini rolls disappear without trace. Obieri has most of them.
Wasp is returning to Barnwood Villas in a car the size of a Sherman tank, but struggles to get in as his dinner plate smile’s catching on the sides, so he has the back seat to himself with four in the front. Needs must.
Saturday
It’s the morning after the evening before and we’re sitting in BTP on Cheltenham’s Clarence Street, appropriately just down the way from the Coach Wilson Museum. The left side of the table’s indulging in a one-way conversation about the vagaries of the Midsomer Norton dog agility course, while the right side’s basking in a fug of reflective contentment. The wind is probably playing as much havoc with this morning’s Yellows’ fixture in Newport as it used to do with Coach Stalley’s toupee before he saw an advert proclaiming ‘real is best’, leading to him dispensing with both the rug and the Velcro fasteners shortly before passing his Level Two.
Meanwhile, The Photographer’s still poring over the wig problem of his own. ‘Tou pay or not tou pay’; that was the question which was almost wholly met with a negative response from last night’s netball gathering and he’s left reflecting that the footballing hoi polloi may have been a better remunerative bet than the sedentary aristocrats within.
No such problems for the Howitzer however; he’s shooting off to Twickers for a bit more excitement, though it doesn’t quite turn out the way he envisaged. Never, ever rest on your laurels, whatever they are, is a lesson well worth learning. Burgess however doesn’t have laurels, only the here and now, which is one of the reasons why he’s good.
Over in Oxstalls Drive, Lettuce is washed, shaved and fully clothed long before anyone can say, ‘Switch that dinkum alarm clock off.’ He’s clean, ready, prepared and raring to go in true Boy Scout fashion for whatever this football-free Saturday has to offer. A little further north in Mandalay Drive, Mother Daniels is lovingly preparing HD’s celebratory cornflakes & cucumber breakfast, a veritable feast much loved all those years ago on the Burmese road of the same name. Just beyond the hill and near the river, WC, now an avid reader of The Times each evening, is about to begin Chapter Four of Tolstoy’s War & Peace. He’s heard it’s the one where Nikolai Rostov leaves Moscow to take up a post with the Pavlograd Regiment and he really can’t wait. At precisely the same moment on the other side of the Golden Valley, Miss Bussey gets that now all-familiar tingle down the entire length of her spine, but whether it’s anything to do with WC’s literary persuasion, she’s not quite sure.
In Barnwood Road, Wasp’s smile has yet to narrow, but while that’s hugely positive and psychologically great, it’s taking him an age to clean his teeth as a half-inch brush into a three-foot mouth equals an hour and a bit at the very least. On The Wheatway, Slider’s hard at work repainting the ticks on his perfect black boots; he’d felt-tipped them on for the Swindon game to mark his long-awaited return to the fray, but after his performance yesterday he’s remarking them again because now he knows he’s really returned. In half an hour’s time, he’ll bold-tick his sliders for good measure too. There’s Clunking in Coopers Edge, which is not quite Sleepless in Seattle, though similar in more ways than one, meaning Iron Man’s oiling his rivets and lubricating his joints as he prepares, both mentally and physically, for next Saturday’s second leg.
In downmarket Painswick, Kirk Douglas May is watching a re-run of the epic film in which he starred way back in 1960, while at the same time, but on a different screen, he’s re-running F100%B’s video footage of yesterday’s second goal. That stepover, that left foot, that assist, he can’t quite believe what he’s seeing. Feeling empowered as never before, he boldly proclaims, ‘I am Spartacus,’ to the rest of the household, but no-one replies as they’ve gone out for the day and locked all the doors about two hours earlier.
Six miles south west, in Lavington Drive, ‘I Might Be Some Time’ is tucking into a Full English in the quiet and relaxing confines of his penthouse bedroom suite, before spending a good thirty minutes on his home-made, two-cans-and-a-piece-of-string telephone direct to the kitchen, ordering thirds. In Moreton Road however, The Determinator’s nursing a rumbling stomach and a vibrating diaphragm, while hunger pangs that can be heard as far afield as Bisham Abbey emanate loudly from way beyond the front door. What’s the point of getting up on a Saturday morning if you can’t feast on a couple of centre backs, with a midfielder or two for elevenses, lunch and even afternoon tea to follow?
Unbeknown to anyone a hundred yards away in BTP, Coach Wilson’s loitering in the museum that’s named in his honour, inspecting the most-prized exhibit in the second floor display cabinets. It’s a copy of the programme from the only previous occasion that we’ve won the Shires Cup, an ancient relic dated early May 2006. And in Highnam Villas, The Chairman’s lovingly crafted microfiche collection reveals the number of times we could have reached two finals in the same season, but didn’t.
We hobble down Clarence Street with a realisation shared by most people with a discernible limp and it’s this. One leg is certainly better than no legs, but two legs are most definitely better than one. Roll on Saturday.
Gloucester: High Definition; Slider, Iron Man, Vespula Vulgaris; WC, Full English, Howitzer, Lettuce; The Determinator; Issur Danielovitch.
With staging the First Leg of the Wycombe semi final double-header at Longlevens on a Friday afternoon as close to a logistical impossibility as you can get, Brendon at the University has come to our rescue and rescheduled the annual 3G pitch MOT and Service to allow us to play at Oxstalls and booked us a couple of disinfectant-clean changing rooms into the bargain. Karl at the Tennis Centre has sorted us a place to eat (which we don’t ultimately use) and the finer points of the event arrangements are agreed with visitors Wycombe. The ref’s been sorted and Coach Stalley’s got his cones and discs at the ready to highlight the startlingly dull blue lines that demarcate the centre’s 9-a-side pitch. The programme’s been printed, but as it’s a double-weekend issue, it’ll be easier to sell it next Saturday. Transporting the matchday kiosk from the Home of Football to Oxstalls might have proved to be somewhat problematic.
With Storm Gareth replacing the recently blown out Storm Freya Boucher, The Potteries are being lashed and the water-resistant properties of the black & yellow GPSFA showerproof are being well and truly put to the test. Meanwhile, around a hundred miles south at Norton Centre of Excellence, Miss Bussey is beside herself (with joy). She’s just received a letter from Mother Myatt, saying that WC will be leaving school early on Friday afternoon and she can’t hide her excitement at what she tells everyone within earshot is, ‘Starting the weekend an hour and a half early.’ High Definition’s leaving early too, much to her obvious disappointment, but in a life full of sacrifices, you have to accept a little bit of collateral damage along the rocky road to paradise.
Friday
The M6 is largely traffic free, the programmes are collected (ready for next week) and the Tesco chicken nuggets and Irish pork sausages are bought, cooked and container-ed. The kit, footballs and food are stacked high in the car and Wycombe are on the A40, heading unerringly west towards Glaws.
The nice people of Norton and Upton St Leonards are first to arrive, Full English of Elmbridge is last and everyone else is somewhere in between. Slider has painted out the white ‘I’m back’ ticks on his rather fetching black boots, while WC’s bright red slippers would be things of real beauty if he wasn’t going to play football in them. Fieldhouse is changed and ready for action eons before anyone else, though the same can’t be said of Obieri, who churns out a sentence or ten after the addition of each item of clothing or equipment. It’s a case of right shin pad – talk – left shin pad – talk – right sock – talk – left sock – talk – you get the drift.
The warm-up is focussed and with Coach Stalley otherwise engaged putting the final pitch cones in place, there is a profound lack of skipping, meaning HD is thrilled to the core, but is far too nice to say so.
Gloucester start the quicker with Burgess and Full English taking control of the central midfield area, while Myatt and Fieldhouse are linking well down the flanks. Ten minutes in and it’s 1-0, Burgess playing in Obieri who lifts the ball over the onrushing keeper.
The hosts continue to enjoy more of the possession but can’t add a second, while Slider, Iron Man and Vespula Vulgaris look in command in the city back line. McCaffrey however comes within millimetres of a leveller, his well struck free kick coming back off the underside of the bar before being cleared to safety.
We have a new (proper) physio in the home ranks today and Fieldhouse, desperate to be treated by someone who actually knows what they’re doing, collapses in a heap after 23 minutes in order to get some TLC from a qualified professional. ‘Nobody gave me any proper attention when I feigned concussion last week,’ moans Iron Man, but few are listening as everyone else is trying to work out how they can ‘Do a Fieldhouse’ without anyone with a badge realising what they’re really up to.
Momentum is maintained as the second half gets underway and five minutes in, Kirk (Douglas) puts in an excellent left wing cross and Myatt steals in to double the advantage. A penalty box foul on the rampaging Obieri results in a spot kick that’s emphatically tucked away by Burgess, though Iron Man doesn’t see the result as he can’t bring himself to watch.
Another indiscretion, just outside the area this time, but Burgess again engineers the very same outcome in the very same corner. Some lax defending gives Wycombe the opportunity to reduce the arrears, but more good work from Myatt and more great footwork from Obieri restores the four-goal cushion.
Obieri now takes it upon himself to further upset the Wycombe back line before completing his treble with a drive that contains anger, belief and creativity in equal measure – a real ABC of a goal. Unfortunately, F100%B’s all-seeing technological eye momentarily freezes for the second week running and youtube is denied an alphabetical treat.
With free kicks becoming all the rage, Selleck follows up Jankovic’s effort to grab the visitors’ second, before Wasp completes the tally by driving home a loose ball from outside the box into what has, in the last twenty minutes, become universally known as Burgess Corner. All we need now is Archie’s Divot and we’ll have a biblically challenged BC to AD.
It’s been a great performance from beginning to end and a second half that’s seen virtually every shot turn to gold. There was creativity and work rate down the flanks and through the middle, but the Vye-Caple-Freeman combination with Jones sitting just in front made for a steadfast defensive line which was at the core of tonight’s success.
The Photographer has missed most of the action though, as following a simple arithmetic calculation, he determined that he had more chance of raking in a few bob from the upmarket audience at the sports hall netball event than the 51 hardy souls gathered behind the 3G railing, so he’s spent only fifteen minutes at the footy. He goes home thinking we’ve won 1-0.
The lovingly prepared Tesco chicken nuggets and Irish pork sausages go down like a lead balloon, though the half price chocolate mini rolls disappear without trace. Obieri has most of them.
Wasp is returning to Barnwood Villas in a car the size of a Sherman tank, but struggles to get in as his dinner plate smile’s catching on the sides, so he has the back seat to himself with four in the front. Needs must.
Saturday
It’s the morning after the evening before and we’re sitting in BTP on Cheltenham’s Clarence Street, appropriately just down the way from the Coach Wilson Museum. The left side of the table’s indulging in a one-way conversation about the vagaries of the Midsomer Norton dog agility course, while the right side’s basking in a fug of reflective contentment. The wind is probably playing as much havoc with this morning’s Yellows’ fixture in Newport as it used to do with Coach Stalley’s toupee before he saw an advert proclaiming ‘real is best’, leading to him dispensing with both the rug and the Velcro fasteners shortly before passing his Level Two.
Meanwhile, The Photographer’s still poring over the wig problem of his own. ‘Tou pay or not tou pay’; that was the question which was almost wholly met with a negative response from last night’s netball gathering and he’s left reflecting that the footballing hoi polloi may have been a better remunerative bet than the sedentary aristocrats within.
No such problems for the Howitzer however; he’s shooting off to Twickers for a bit more excitement, though it doesn’t quite turn out the way he envisaged. Never, ever rest on your laurels, whatever they are, is a lesson well worth learning. Burgess however doesn’t have laurels, only the here and now, which is one of the reasons why he’s good.
Over in Oxstalls Drive, Lettuce is washed, shaved and fully clothed long before anyone can say, ‘Switch that dinkum alarm clock off.’ He’s clean, ready, prepared and raring to go in true Boy Scout fashion for whatever this football-free Saturday has to offer. A little further north in Mandalay Drive, Mother Daniels is lovingly preparing HD’s celebratory cornflakes & cucumber breakfast, a veritable feast much loved all those years ago on the Burmese road of the same name. Just beyond the hill and near the river, WC, now an avid reader of The Times each evening, is about to begin Chapter Four of Tolstoy’s War & Peace. He’s heard it’s the one where Nikolai Rostov leaves Moscow to take up a post with the Pavlograd Regiment and he really can’t wait. At precisely the same moment on the other side of the Golden Valley, Miss Bussey gets that now all-familiar tingle down the entire length of her spine, but whether it’s anything to do with WC’s literary persuasion, she’s not quite sure.
In Barnwood Road, Wasp’s smile has yet to narrow, but while that’s hugely positive and psychologically great, it’s taking him an age to clean his teeth as a half-inch brush into a three-foot mouth equals an hour and a bit at the very least. On The Wheatway, Slider’s hard at work repainting the ticks on his perfect black boots; he’d felt-tipped them on for the Swindon game to mark his long-awaited return to the fray, but after his performance yesterday he’s remarking them again because now he knows he’s really returned. In half an hour’s time, he’ll bold-tick his sliders for good measure too. There’s Clunking in Coopers Edge, which is not quite Sleepless in Seattle, though similar in more ways than one, meaning Iron Man’s oiling his rivets and lubricating his joints as he prepares, both mentally and physically, for next Saturday’s second leg.
In downmarket Painswick, Kirk Douglas May is watching a re-run of the epic film in which he starred way back in 1960, while at the same time, but on a different screen, he’s re-running F100%B’s video footage of yesterday’s second goal. That stepover, that left foot, that assist, he can’t quite believe what he’s seeing. Feeling empowered as never before, he boldly proclaims, ‘I am Spartacus,’ to the rest of the household, but no-one replies as they’ve gone out for the day and locked all the doors about two hours earlier.
Six miles south west, in Lavington Drive, ‘I Might Be Some Time’ is tucking into a Full English in the quiet and relaxing confines of his penthouse bedroom suite, before spending a good thirty minutes on his home-made, two-cans-and-a-piece-of-string telephone direct to the kitchen, ordering thirds. In Moreton Road however, The Determinator’s nursing a rumbling stomach and a vibrating diaphragm, while hunger pangs that can be heard as far afield as Bisham Abbey emanate loudly from way beyond the front door. What’s the point of getting up on a Saturday morning if you can’t feast on a couple of centre backs, with a midfielder or two for elevenses, lunch and even afternoon tea to follow?
Unbeknown to anyone a hundred yards away in BTP, Coach Wilson’s loitering in the museum that’s named in his honour, inspecting the most-prized exhibit in the second floor display cabinets. It’s a copy of the programme from the only previous occasion that we’ve won the Shires Cup, an ancient relic dated early May 2006. And in Highnam Villas, The Chairman’s lovingly crafted microfiche collection reveals the number of times we could have reached two finals in the same season, but didn’t.
We hobble down Clarence Street with a realisation shared by most people with a discernible limp and it’s this. One leg is certainly better than no legs, but two legs are most definitely better than one. Roll on Saturday.
Gloucester: High Definition; Slider, Iron Man, Vespula Vulgaris; WC, Full English, Howitzer, Lettuce; The Determinator; Issur Danielovitch.
