Spook Street
Only readers of a certain vintage will remember Cat Stevens’ 1971 rendition of ‘Morning has Broken’ and as neither the Chairman nor the Photographer (thankfully) scrutinise this blog, there won’t be many of those. Anyway, it’s the day after Friday 13th and the advertising boards are going up long before the song title has happened and the person who complained that the hoardings on the far side aren’t in a straight line has clearly never set up a ground in the pitch dark before.
In his younger days (and surprisingly, I hear you say, but please not directly to him), the Chairman was a real-life spy and in true John Le Carre fashion, used to sneak in and out of GCHQ at the oddest of times, without any of the security guards being any the wiser. For similar reasons, while we’d like to thank the Stadium Erection Team who arrived at GL2 long before Cat Stevens ever imagined, they can’t be named as no-one actually saw them in the pre-7am gloom and their identity will remain one of the great unsolved mysteries of our time.
The Groundsman’s had a busy week and hasn’t opened his medical book for the past seven days, meaning (a) he hasn’t read page 32 (Bubonic Plague) yet and as such (b) he’s here. While his ‘I was y‘ere at 5 o’clock’ claim is spurious to say the least, he has in all fairness worked up a fair degree of sweat and invented a fair few infections to boot by the time everyone else has signed the register.
Unlike the Chairman, neither the Groundsman nor The Photographer were spies of any repute. The former’s interest in covert enterprises ended in 1913, when the preliminary medical ruled him out of ‘The overseas trip of a lifetime’ as advertised by the lugubrious Kitchener’s right index finger; it wasn’t the fact that there was anything wrong with him, it was more the fact that he told everyone that there was. The Photographer on the other hand had no problem whatsoever with either his WWII interview or subsequent medical; the issue was that after he’d made a successful midnight landing in a little town in northern France circa 15th July 1942, the fake red beret and string of cooking onions did little to disguise the fact that in addition to collecting information on enemy movements in the neighbourhood, he was also running one of his ‘2 for the price of 4’ scams in the central square and was arrested shortly before midday.
The rain starts bouncing down on the kitchen roof shortly before 8.30, but The Chef is oblivious to the external downpour as the sound displays exactly the same timbre as his unadulterated pride and joy – the bubble and spit of the Longlevens deep fat fryer. From the depths of the cauldron he carefully extracts a couple of dodgy-looking objects and proceeds to convince The Groundsman that these really do belong in his banger bap, before checking to see if the machine in the spanking new defibrillator box is actually working.
With Newport providing the initial opposition on both pitches, the team starts to drift into GL2. Unsurprisingly, Theo ‘One of our own’ Bevan is first on the scene, while less surprisingly, Croose, for the second week running, is five places ahead of expected and arrives in sixth place, just ahead of our very nice Croatian defender, OB.
Changing is a bit of a problem though, as the aforementioned Croose is still in his social socks by the time the remainder of the squad are ready, waiting and chomping at the bit, the usual suspects plus born-again Milton to the fore in regard to the speed of transformation from boy to player. In the middle of the group and not far from the eighth coat hanger, there’s a white shirt perfectly placed on the changing room floor and Hine is nowhere to be seen, so that little mystery is quickly solved. Croose meanwhile is complaining of a knotted intestine, but it turns out the problem is external and it’s the ties on his shorts that have locked, rather than some alimentary monkey puzzle as he first thought.
Most of the Sutton squad have stayed overnight at the Barnwood Premier Inn, a hotel that really should be sponsoring the pavilion’s new roof, the amount of custom they’re indirectly getting from us at the moment. As a result, their 30-seater coach has bounced up the M4 with precious few people in it, though the driver isn’t complaining - or saying anything at all for that matter; the gargantuan breakfast roll that he’s attempting to force between his upper and lower jaw preventing any sort of verbal utterance whatsoever.
There’s the tunnel and walk-out and kick-off and an interesting first five minutes to the final home game of 2019. We have a good first hundred seconds, then Sutton force two successive corners and there’s a bit of penalty box ping-pong going on in the general vicinity of Simpson’s pinks, Brockbank’s oranges and JC’s traditionals. With those first five minutes almost up, left back Curtis finds centre mid Bennett who plays in Triple A-plus-two to sidestep the keeper and apply another of his trademark ad nonchalance finishes for 1-0.
The lead doesn’t last long, however. Sutton win a free kick on the edge of our box, Ansermoz extracts his magnetic compass from inside his goalkeeping glove, but loses his bearings and Fasida equalises. It’s his only lapse in another confident handling display, but the Chairman’s insistence on compulsory attendance at a hastily-booked Monday morning orienteering course is something he’ll struggle to get out of. ‘After all,’ reminisces our esteemed leader, ‘Back in the day when I was a spy, it was no point standing directly behind the Berlin Wall….’
Undaunted, we continue to compete all over the pitch, with Bevan and Bennett gaining the upper hand in central midfield and as such limiting the supply of ball to the visitors’ wide players. On twenty two minutes, Bevan thumps an effort against the Sutton crossbar, but barely sixty seconds later, Bennett’s willingness to shoot pays dividends once more, as for the second week running a goalkeeping error sees the Gloucester number eight on the scoresheet and it’s 2-1.
Brockbank, Simpson and Curtis, together with the hard-working midfield four, remain steadfast as Sutton look to draw level before the interval, but with Ali’s pace up front, the hosts still look dangerous on the break and the half time jaffas and jellies are well received by all concerned.
On the sidelines, Frau Stavrou is manning the programme box while consuming a very runny bacon & egg bap, though General Stavrou is absent due to visiting the local cartography store on Commercial Road. ‘He gets it from me,’ was the last thing he was heard to say and everyone knows that this is true. Father Bennett arrived early having gone for an early-morning run, but Mother Bennett’s attempts to keep up while wearing her little furry ankle huggers haven’t quite gone to plan and she fails to make an appearance. There aren’t any incriminating crowd photographs available, so no-one’s quite sure whether Mother Simpson has ditched her Navarone jackboots in favour of a less military-style design of footwear or not, but Mother Beaumont certainly hasn’t. The walkway outside Highnam stores at the end of Maidenhall was completely awash when she nipped out to procure her copy of The Guardian at 7.20 on Wednesday morning, meaning her once-green Duke of Wellingtons were an absolute must and just to be on the safe side, she hasn’t removed them since.
The second period begins in much the same way that the first one ended and Bolu’s shimmy, shift and pass into the far corner displays excellent technique as Sutton are level six minutes in. That the free-scoring centre forward doesn’t get another direct opportunity on goal is credit to Simpson, Beaumont and Curtis who defend with aplomb, while Milton and Hine tuck in effectively to make it very difficult for the South London attackers. Bevan and Bennett maintain their non-stop harry and pass in the centre of the field, with no Sutton player given the time or space to create anything of note. Of particular interest is the new-found technique of Croatia Testudine over on the right. Having visited the pantomime on Friday evening, not once is he subjected to the harrowing call of ‘He’s behind you,’ meaning the Sutton left winger doesn’t get the laughs he desires at any point during the second half.
Up front and despite all his efforts, Croose is making little headway against the strong visiting centre back, but drifting onto the left side he makes the crucial run and cross that Hine despatches at the far post and suddenly it’s 3-2. Hine then rattles the Sutton crossbar with a right foot effort straight out of the coaching book, before giving the hosts a two-goal cushion. Bevan and Croose combine in the centre to provide the midfielder with a couple of yards of space on the left side of the box and he arrows his drive into the top far corner to spark a celebration that rightly sees Ansermoz only yards away from joining in. There’s a very loud, though completely tuneless interjection of ‘Good times never seem so good,’ from a tall man in a blue jacket who’s standing just to the right of the main stand and even Frau Stavrou joins in with the ‘So good, so good, so good’ at the end of each chorus. If only she’d finished her bacon and egg roll first.
There is still time for Sutton to set up a grandstand finish, but there’s a real determination amongst the group to give nothing away and the referee’s concluding whistle signals both the team’s best result of the season to date and the Chairman’s intent to congratulate the players as soon as they’ve done their crowd-run along the far touchline. As the confectionery box is passed around, our leader is glimpsed starting to move ever so gingerly across the slippery surface, unfortunately with barely a quarter of the grace that he used to employ in circumnavigating the minefields in No Man’s Land all those years ago. Sad to say, the pace, agility and stealth that characterised his incursions into enemy territory also seem to have gone by the wayside and by the time he reaches the big blue benches, the players are in the eating room scoffing their post-match offerings.
Unlike every Gloucester citizen present at GL2 this morning, the Photographer is in a state of acute depression. Picture sales are down and such is the paucity of fresh cash in his pocket, he hasn’t even bothered to attach the padlock that seems to be an almost permanent fixture on his one and only pair of trousers. He measures his Saturday morning income on a Holiday Scale that finishes with a fortnight lying on the palm-fringed beaches of the Maldives sipping a Pina colada, though today he’s looking at little more than a wet and windy afternoon in Burnham-on-Sea with only a stray dog and an out-of-date stick of candy floss for company. No prizes for guessing who’s paying for lunch then.
Also on Planet Miserable is Coach Wilson, who’s just discovered next week’s game at Swansea is an afternoon kick-off, meaning his finely-tuned constitution will have to cope in a completely different time zone. There’s a flicker of excitement however when he considers there are two new service stations with which to acquaint himself, though the thought that they may yet be ‘Another Reading’ means that ‘flicker’ is about as good as it’s likely to get.
It’s 7.30pm and it’s been a long old day for Chairman Steadman, who’s just arrived back at Highnam Villas. He finally extricated himself from the Longlevens pitch shortly after half past five and, remembering his Secret Service training that spooks spy better on a full stomach, stopped off in the lay-by just down from the Toby Carvery to finish off the spare cakes, flapjacks and sausage rolls that he was transporting home ‘for the family.’ Now, sitting in his favourite armchair next to his favourite wife, sleep finally overtakes him. His dreams transport him from forty-year-old covert operations in the Eastern Bloc to barely four-hour-old heroics versus Sutton at Longlevens, then back behind the Iron Curtain for another helping of cloak-and-dagger espionage and unappetising cabbage soup. But it matters not, for the motto was the same there as it is here. ‘Qui audet adipiscitur’ is the adage in question. Or in plain old English, ‘Who dares, wins.’
Gloucester A: Stavrou Junior; Orange Boots, Pink Boots, Black Boots; On-Time, One of our Own, My Assist, Sweet Caroline; Triple A-plus-Two; Born Again, Croatia Testudine
In his younger days (and surprisingly, I hear you say, but please not directly to him), the Chairman was a real-life spy and in true John Le Carre fashion, used to sneak in and out of GCHQ at the oddest of times, without any of the security guards being any the wiser. For similar reasons, while we’d like to thank the Stadium Erection Team who arrived at GL2 long before Cat Stevens ever imagined, they can’t be named as no-one actually saw them in the pre-7am gloom and their identity will remain one of the great unsolved mysteries of our time.
The Groundsman’s had a busy week and hasn’t opened his medical book for the past seven days, meaning (a) he hasn’t read page 32 (Bubonic Plague) yet and as such (b) he’s here. While his ‘I was y‘ere at 5 o’clock’ claim is spurious to say the least, he has in all fairness worked up a fair degree of sweat and invented a fair few infections to boot by the time everyone else has signed the register.
Unlike the Chairman, neither the Groundsman nor The Photographer were spies of any repute. The former’s interest in covert enterprises ended in 1913, when the preliminary medical ruled him out of ‘The overseas trip of a lifetime’ as advertised by the lugubrious Kitchener’s right index finger; it wasn’t the fact that there was anything wrong with him, it was more the fact that he told everyone that there was. The Photographer on the other hand had no problem whatsoever with either his WWII interview or subsequent medical; the issue was that after he’d made a successful midnight landing in a little town in northern France circa 15th July 1942, the fake red beret and string of cooking onions did little to disguise the fact that in addition to collecting information on enemy movements in the neighbourhood, he was also running one of his ‘2 for the price of 4’ scams in the central square and was arrested shortly before midday.
The rain starts bouncing down on the kitchen roof shortly before 8.30, but The Chef is oblivious to the external downpour as the sound displays exactly the same timbre as his unadulterated pride and joy – the bubble and spit of the Longlevens deep fat fryer. From the depths of the cauldron he carefully extracts a couple of dodgy-looking objects and proceeds to convince The Groundsman that these really do belong in his banger bap, before checking to see if the machine in the spanking new defibrillator box is actually working.
With Newport providing the initial opposition on both pitches, the team starts to drift into GL2. Unsurprisingly, Theo ‘One of our own’ Bevan is first on the scene, while less surprisingly, Croose, for the second week running, is five places ahead of expected and arrives in sixth place, just ahead of our very nice Croatian defender, OB.
Changing is a bit of a problem though, as the aforementioned Croose is still in his social socks by the time the remainder of the squad are ready, waiting and chomping at the bit, the usual suspects plus born-again Milton to the fore in regard to the speed of transformation from boy to player. In the middle of the group and not far from the eighth coat hanger, there’s a white shirt perfectly placed on the changing room floor and Hine is nowhere to be seen, so that little mystery is quickly solved. Croose meanwhile is complaining of a knotted intestine, but it turns out the problem is external and it’s the ties on his shorts that have locked, rather than some alimentary monkey puzzle as he first thought.
Most of the Sutton squad have stayed overnight at the Barnwood Premier Inn, a hotel that really should be sponsoring the pavilion’s new roof, the amount of custom they’re indirectly getting from us at the moment. As a result, their 30-seater coach has bounced up the M4 with precious few people in it, though the driver isn’t complaining - or saying anything at all for that matter; the gargantuan breakfast roll that he’s attempting to force between his upper and lower jaw preventing any sort of verbal utterance whatsoever.
There’s the tunnel and walk-out and kick-off and an interesting first five minutes to the final home game of 2019. We have a good first hundred seconds, then Sutton force two successive corners and there’s a bit of penalty box ping-pong going on in the general vicinity of Simpson’s pinks, Brockbank’s oranges and JC’s traditionals. With those first five minutes almost up, left back Curtis finds centre mid Bennett who plays in Triple A-plus-two to sidestep the keeper and apply another of his trademark ad nonchalance finishes for 1-0.
The lead doesn’t last long, however. Sutton win a free kick on the edge of our box, Ansermoz extracts his magnetic compass from inside his goalkeeping glove, but loses his bearings and Fasida equalises. It’s his only lapse in another confident handling display, but the Chairman’s insistence on compulsory attendance at a hastily-booked Monday morning orienteering course is something he’ll struggle to get out of. ‘After all,’ reminisces our esteemed leader, ‘Back in the day when I was a spy, it was no point standing directly behind the Berlin Wall….’
Undaunted, we continue to compete all over the pitch, with Bevan and Bennett gaining the upper hand in central midfield and as such limiting the supply of ball to the visitors’ wide players. On twenty two minutes, Bevan thumps an effort against the Sutton crossbar, but barely sixty seconds later, Bennett’s willingness to shoot pays dividends once more, as for the second week running a goalkeeping error sees the Gloucester number eight on the scoresheet and it’s 2-1.
Brockbank, Simpson and Curtis, together with the hard-working midfield four, remain steadfast as Sutton look to draw level before the interval, but with Ali’s pace up front, the hosts still look dangerous on the break and the half time jaffas and jellies are well received by all concerned.
On the sidelines, Frau Stavrou is manning the programme box while consuming a very runny bacon & egg bap, though General Stavrou is absent due to visiting the local cartography store on Commercial Road. ‘He gets it from me,’ was the last thing he was heard to say and everyone knows that this is true. Father Bennett arrived early having gone for an early-morning run, but Mother Bennett’s attempts to keep up while wearing her little furry ankle huggers haven’t quite gone to plan and she fails to make an appearance. There aren’t any incriminating crowd photographs available, so no-one’s quite sure whether Mother Simpson has ditched her Navarone jackboots in favour of a less military-style design of footwear or not, but Mother Beaumont certainly hasn’t. The walkway outside Highnam stores at the end of Maidenhall was completely awash when she nipped out to procure her copy of The Guardian at 7.20 on Wednesday morning, meaning her once-green Duke of Wellingtons were an absolute must and just to be on the safe side, she hasn’t removed them since.
The second period begins in much the same way that the first one ended and Bolu’s shimmy, shift and pass into the far corner displays excellent technique as Sutton are level six minutes in. That the free-scoring centre forward doesn’t get another direct opportunity on goal is credit to Simpson, Beaumont and Curtis who defend with aplomb, while Milton and Hine tuck in effectively to make it very difficult for the South London attackers. Bevan and Bennett maintain their non-stop harry and pass in the centre of the field, with no Sutton player given the time or space to create anything of note. Of particular interest is the new-found technique of Croatia Testudine over on the right. Having visited the pantomime on Friday evening, not once is he subjected to the harrowing call of ‘He’s behind you,’ meaning the Sutton left winger doesn’t get the laughs he desires at any point during the second half.
Up front and despite all his efforts, Croose is making little headway against the strong visiting centre back, but drifting onto the left side he makes the crucial run and cross that Hine despatches at the far post and suddenly it’s 3-2. Hine then rattles the Sutton crossbar with a right foot effort straight out of the coaching book, before giving the hosts a two-goal cushion. Bevan and Croose combine in the centre to provide the midfielder with a couple of yards of space on the left side of the box and he arrows his drive into the top far corner to spark a celebration that rightly sees Ansermoz only yards away from joining in. There’s a very loud, though completely tuneless interjection of ‘Good times never seem so good,’ from a tall man in a blue jacket who’s standing just to the right of the main stand and even Frau Stavrou joins in with the ‘So good, so good, so good’ at the end of each chorus. If only she’d finished her bacon and egg roll first.
There is still time for Sutton to set up a grandstand finish, but there’s a real determination amongst the group to give nothing away and the referee’s concluding whistle signals both the team’s best result of the season to date and the Chairman’s intent to congratulate the players as soon as they’ve done their crowd-run along the far touchline. As the confectionery box is passed around, our leader is glimpsed starting to move ever so gingerly across the slippery surface, unfortunately with barely a quarter of the grace that he used to employ in circumnavigating the minefields in No Man’s Land all those years ago. Sad to say, the pace, agility and stealth that characterised his incursions into enemy territory also seem to have gone by the wayside and by the time he reaches the big blue benches, the players are in the eating room scoffing their post-match offerings.
Unlike every Gloucester citizen present at GL2 this morning, the Photographer is in a state of acute depression. Picture sales are down and such is the paucity of fresh cash in his pocket, he hasn’t even bothered to attach the padlock that seems to be an almost permanent fixture on his one and only pair of trousers. He measures his Saturday morning income on a Holiday Scale that finishes with a fortnight lying on the palm-fringed beaches of the Maldives sipping a Pina colada, though today he’s looking at little more than a wet and windy afternoon in Burnham-on-Sea with only a stray dog and an out-of-date stick of candy floss for company. No prizes for guessing who’s paying for lunch then.
Also on Planet Miserable is Coach Wilson, who’s just discovered next week’s game at Swansea is an afternoon kick-off, meaning his finely-tuned constitution will have to cope in a completely different time zone. There’s a flicker of excitement however when he considers there are two new service stations with which to acquaint himself, though the thought that they may yet be ‘Another Reading’ means that ‘flicker’ is about as good as it’s likely to get.
It’s 7.30pm and it’s been a long old day for Chairman Steadman, who’s just arrived back at Highnam Villas. He finally extricated himself from the Longlevens pitch shortly after half past five and, remembering his Secret Service training that spooks spy better on a full stomach, stopped off in the lay-by just down from the Toby Carvery to finish off the spare cakes, flapjacks and sausage rolls that he was transporting home ‘for the family.’ Now, sitting in his favourite armchair next to his favourite wife, sleep finally overtakes him. His dreams transport him from forty-year-old covert operations in the Eastern Bloc to barely four-hour-old heroics versus Sutton at Longlevens, then back behind the Iron Curtain for another helping of cloak-and-dagger espionage and unappetising cabbage soup. But it matters not, for the motto was the same there as it is here. ‘Qui audet adipiscitur’ is the adage in question. Or in plain old English, ‘Who dares, wins.’
Gloucester A: Stavrou Junior; Orange Boots, Pink Boots, Black Boots; On-Time, One of our Own, My Assist, Sweet Caroline; Triple A-plus-Two; Born Again, Croatia Testudine
