NEWBURY – 03.10.20

Friday

It’s the Sponsored Shoot Out at a very wet OSP. Coach Harris is doing his best to tally his charts on a plastic-covered clipboard, Coach Delaney goes with technology to record the Girls’ events on his phone, while Development Coaches Brentley & Ratcliffe rely on the tried-and-tested fingers & thumbs method. They all seem to work, so who’s counting? All of them, hopefully.

In the U11 boys’ section, Captain Cooper has zero at the mid-point, but three at the end, while Smiffy has three at the mid-point and three at the end. Everyone else, apart from Lidl, is somewhere in-between. The new Dinglewellian puts the positivity of both his schoolmates together and nets three in the first half and three in the second to win the Oxstalls equivalent of the Ballon d’Or, more commonly known in these parts as the ‘Meilleur Tireur’.

Squelch round to Simon the Signwriter afterwards to pick up a new advertising board for the pitch side and a new ‘Welcome’ sign for the changing rooms. With a new sponsors’ backdrop procured from Typecraft this morning and the arrival of two boxes of inscribed bricks for the ‘Players & Supporters’ Wall this afternoon, there’ll be plenty to do in the GPSFA pavilion over the next fortnight or so.

Saturday

The first away jaunt of the season sees us make the relatively short (in Gloucester terms) trip to Newbury for our opening away fixture of the season. In these days of no mini buses, it’s a later than usual early-morning alarm, a later than usual leave and a later than usual collection of The Photographer from Abbotswood Road in Brockworth. Armed with his extra-long lens and multicoloured brolly, the affectionately nicknamed Trotter loses no time in launching into his Saturday morning monologue, pausing once for breath as we zoom past what we think is The Highwayman, an over-priced pub that languishes somewhere beyond the mist-covered roadside, and finally drawing to an abrupt close as we suddenly switch lanes on the big roundabout just before Chieveley. Must try that manouevre more often.

Coach Stalley, preferring a soothing bout of classical music on the trip down and as such declining the offer of a slightly more vocally-challenged lift, looks a picture of calm as he removes the Bs, Bs & Cs from the boot of his big red car, followed by the unveiling of the new edition of ‘FA Warm-Ups for U11s’ from the double combination-locked glove compartment.

We trudge up the winding path to the pitch, a sea of pristine green and no surface water despite 36 hours of pretty much non-stop rain, where the players are put through their paces, blissfully unaware that the rain has smudged the coach’s copious Friday evening annotations of ‘Warm-up No 1’, which is the reason why the pre-match activity resembles a Netball for Beginners session. The Photographer is happy though as it gives him the opportunity of one of his favourite shots – a landscape. ‘They always sell,’ he mutters to himself, while struggling to disguise the wryest of smiles.

It must be kick-off time as Boris has got both gloves on, Velcro-ed the cuffs and nodded his ultimate seal of approval, but Newbury’s team talk is a tad longer than anticipated, giving the thirty three spectators the opportunity to discuss the pros (nil) and cons (loads) of Eagle’s hideously coloured boots before the referee’s whistle finally gets the game underway.

Gloucester are dominant early on, Monty Don having the game’s first opportunity, but after side-stepping the keeper he finds the angle too tight and can only hit the side netting. The gardener doesn’t have long to wait though, as Lidl’s perceptive pass plays his new best friend in to rifle home the opener and it’s another Lidl pass that results in the city side’s second, Don’s instinctive finish via the back post making it 2-0.

Cooper is looking solid at the centre of the city backline and with Hurricane and Black-Boots Dix determined to a tee, Newbury’s efforts are limited, though Boris has to be quickly off his line shortly before the break to thwart their best opportunity of the first thirty.

Jaffa cakes are brought out for the first time this season at the rain-soaked half time interval, though 50% of the team don’t seem to like them. Boris is keen however, despite needing to be fed, as by the time he’s taken off his gloves, eaten his fill and replaced his hand coverings to his own high-end standards, we’ll all be in danger of drowning.

The second period gets underway and though the midfield combination of Smith, Eagle, Barnard and Steadman are again on top, the threat to the Newbury goal has initially receded and the hosts reduce the deficit when a free kick deflects in off a Gloucester shin pad.

The visitors respond well though; Steadman’s fine pass plays Don in and though the keeper blocks the initial effort, Two-Foot (as opposed to two-footed) Smith follows up to imperiously net the rebound from fully 24 inches. Page reduces the arrears once more with a well struck effort to bring Newbury back into the game, but there’s a bob-bob-bobbing of umbrellas in the away end as Lidl’s audacious chip is excellently saved by the keeper, who completes a terrific double block by denying Two-Foot from point blank range. The oscillating umbrellas come silently to rest.

The hosts’ final efforts to restore parity are ably dealt with by a Gloucester defence in which Cooper leads by example, playing the conditions in an effective and uncomplicated manner and a first win of the season is entered in the statistician’s results column.

The new world in which we’re currently residing sees changing rooms swapped for back seat sock removal, but within fifteen minutes of returning to the car park, everyone is heading safely back up the A34 with our great city and a plethora of hot baths not too far away. All bar the ex-Chairman, that is, as, after a hundred years of visiting Newbury, he again misses ‘The Midlands’ exit from the first (and only) roundabout he encounters and spends the best part of an hour navigating the back lanes and ‘lovely on a Summer’s day’ Berkshire / Oxfordshire villages, before eventually getting his waterlogged apparel on to the M4 and finally heading for home.

It brings to mind a Gloucester City midweek away game a few years ago when, after losing 3-1 at Corby Town, road works meant we were diverted to Northampton and after eventually getting back on the A14 or A12 or whatever it is, we discovered that both the M42 and M5 were closed for the night. The Chairman took charge at Corley Services shortly after twelve and ordered himself a huge piece of shortbread ‘To keep my energy levels up,’ before passing me a small and not-so-energy-enhancing packet of Ready Salted. After completing our midnight feast, we picked our way through Warwick and Stratford and Evesham and whatever other towns lie along ‘the back route’ and finally got home shortly after two-thirty. At least today, the ex-Chairman’s circumnavigation of the Middle England countryside is on the back of a 3-2 win.

The Photographer’s far quieter than he was on the journey down, but with the heater on full blast, he wouldn’t have been heard anyway. Maybe he is talking incessantly, but nobody else realises as his only audible words on the 65-mile trip home are, ‘Four for the….’ somewhere around Swindon, ‘….price of two,’ as we’re passing Cirencester and ‘….Offer’ just before the Air Balloon. A man of many words finds his message has been succinctly transmitted by using only seven.

5.12pm. After the positivity of the morning, the negativity of the afternoon. The not-so-mighty GCFC have just been knocked out of the FA Cup by Christchurch, a team that play at an equivalent level to Tuffley Rovers. Gloucester need a 93rd-minute equaliser to take the tie to penalties, then lose the shoot-out. The manager offers his insightful post-match explanation: ‘We were so unlucky…. If it had been a boxing match, we’d have been declared winners before half time…. we hit the post three times…. if we play like this in the league, we’ll have a good season (???)…. if we’d had extra time, we’d have won….if we’d had a replay, we’d have won…., blah, blah, blah.’ He’s ensured he’s missed off: ‘If we’d scored more goals than them, we’d have won,’ but I guess that bit’s immaterial. Delete the link. Feel better.

Sunday

Time for reflection. Lots of games waterlogged off yesterday in the Newbury area, but we played. And we won. And there were lots of good bits in the way we played, but lots to work on, too. Like getting people to understand that traditional black boots are the most fashionable footwear available. That Tiger orange and Azure blue and Parakeet green and Eagle yellow are the colours of Joseph’s multicoloured, West End dream coat, not the style and hue associated with Gloucester’s finest.

There’s also news that Coach Wilson’s return flight from a 10-day sabbatical in Turkey has missed the quarantine deadline by about twelve hours, so he’ll be self-isolating for the next two weeks. At least there’s a chance, albeit a 100-1 shot, that at least one member of the squad will have seen the light by then and changed the way their footballing feet look. Until that moment comes, Teagan Dix, you remain our one and only favourite player.

Gloucester: Boris Becker; Hurricane, Cooper, Black Boots; Two-Foot, Barnard, Eagle, Monty Don; Lidl; Steadman