We’re short on numbers today, with White (injured arm at last night’s training session) joining Clifford (cross country championships) and The Model (catwalk duty) on the absentee list, meaning we face playing a man/boy short against both Chiltern & South Bucks for the first time in 38 years. At 7.15, however, Young (Hey) Jude (Folley) raises his hand and steps forward to bring our tally back to nine, while at exactly the same moment, NH McLarney causes further cause for early-morning celebration by arriving at GL2 well before his usual position of twenty-eighth. Clearly his recent coming of age and subsequent eleventh birthday knees-up have made the difference, or maybe it’s the alarm clock and brace of AA batteries that belatedly arrived in the post yesterday, lovingly wrapped in sparkly paper and accompanied by a ‘Hope you had a Great Day; we leave at 7.15 tomorrow’ note from a so-say anonymous admirer.

Nice Jacob Hayes is tucked in neatly behind the driver, with Nice HM on the end of the front seat and Vaile reclining cosily in between. It’s a nailed-on case of a thorn between two roses, while at the back, on his own, is the loudest member of the group, his size meaning it’s more bramble bush than thorn, but the inference remains the same. Captain Bennett attempts to rally the troops as we approach the Elmbridge Court roundabout with a stirring chorus of ‘Hey, Jude,’ but it doesn’t quite catch on due to no-one else knowing the words.

We by-pass Oxford at 8.20, meaning we miss the Saturday morning queues at the Peartree and Cowley roundabouts and rack up at Beaconsfield Services in pretty good time, parking next to an articulated lorry in the ‘Coaches Only’ section. ‘This is my favourite place,’ announces Bobby Brooks, excitedly. ‘I don’t like this one,’ says Folley, predictably.

With it being 9am, it’s bacon baps or Gregg’s for the majority, though Brooks indulges in a bacon, egg & cheese thing followed by a pink doughnut which, for some mysterious reason, he eats on his own at the breakfast bar twenty yards from anyone else. On the main table, NH McLarney munches away contentedly, while right-flicking his fringe every 73.4 seconds. Buckland smiles incessantly, due mostly to not having lost anything since leaving his tracksuit top behind at last night’s final coaching session. Manning, as is his wont, just smiles.

‘I like meat,’ announces Folley, for no apparent reason, a random outburst that prompts the mother in the next seat to pull her five-year-old even closer, as if to say, with a look of defiance rarely experienced in this part of the world: ‘And you’ll have to eat me too,’ to any prospective consumer.

Chalfont St Peter and the adjacent Gerrard’s Cross are a far cry from the concrete jungles of Slough and Bracknell that we’ve experienced on previous outings this year, with Hayes’s thought-bubble clearly intoning: ‘It’s nearly as posh as Highnam’, but being so utterly nice, he wouldn’t possibly verbalise such a thing.

Having jetted down in his dad’s big white car, (Hey) Jude joins us in the Thorpe Park pavilion, a bottle of Lucozade Sport in his right hand and a look of trepidation in his left eye, but eighth cousin Bennett calms his nerves with a ‘Welcome, Jude’ fist-bump and offers a vital piece of dressing room advice: ‘Keep well away from Vaile.’ Both seem to do the trick.

Chiltern are a fine side, moving the ball and themselves quickly and are dominant from the off. The collective effort to curtail their attacks is great, however and backed up by a trio of great saves from Folley, we reach jelly baby time still level.

Five minutes after the break, though, a fine strike from Briant from just inside the box arrows into the bottom corner for what proves to be the game’s decisive moment. (Hey) Jude retires for a red-faced drinks-and-get-your-breath-back break a few minutes later, while older brother Leo continues to repulse the Chiltern forwards with a succession of fine close-range saves, the stopper at times resembling a one-man barricade to the hosts’ incessant attacks.

Again, there is no lack of focus, effort, commitment or attitude from anyone; it’s just that the other side is better – simple as. With a threadbare squad, the players have kept a free-scoring team to a single goal and each should be fully content with the endeavour they demonstrated throughout. Maybe we all need to look more at input rather than outcome, as you can only control the former and what the players put in was as much as they possibly could.

Game over and Captain Bennett spends several minutes conducting a changing room search for his nice white trainers, which have somehow found their way from beneath his seat to way up on the highest pegs, while fifty per cent of Brooks’s horrid orange footwear has also mysteriously changed position too. The perpetrator of this impressive double ruse is none other than Nice Jacob Hayes who, being so utterly nice, couldn’t possibly have done such a thing. He immediately receives a new nom de plume that properly reflects his new-found modus operandi and a look of utter bewilderment from each of his victims.

Post-match hot dogs and Kit-Kats demolished, we exit the upmarket surrounds of Buckinghamshire’s more affluent brethren and head to the fountained delights of Oxford Services, where people divert left and right to suss out their favourite eateries. Folley heads straight for Starbucks (‘Not as good as Costa, but it’ll have to do’), while McLarney and ‘Can I borrow your card?’ Brooks, front up at KFC. The others, including (Hey) Jude, join the never-ending Subway queue, the thrill of building your own butty as compelling as ever on this sunny Saturday afternoon in late March.

First to reappear is Manning, who proceeds to chomp enthusiastically on a six-incher of indeterminate content and he’s quickly followed by The Captain, who’s chosen what looks like a much more prosaic ham & tomato concoction. Hider ‘I don’t like change’ Hayes imbibes his forty-fourth Meatball Marinara of the season to date, pausing only twice to remove the thick red sauce from his constantly rotating jaw before it has the opportunity to drip-drip on to his very nice (and up to now, very clean) GPSFA polo shirt. Hider’s dinner/tea/afternoon snack (delete as applicable) is described on the illuminated menu board as ‘An iconic delicacy made from tender Italian beef’, though which bits of the poor old cow he’s actually eating is anyone’s guess. Across the way, Buckland maintains his unbroken smile as he’s still pretty sure that he has hasn’t lost anything. Well not yet, anyway.

We’re back at GL2 a couple of minutes early and the players and families soon melt away into the mid-afternoon sun. Some will drop off their bag and head out on their bike, some will go and meet their mates after a twenty-minute rehydration programme, while others will sit with their feet up in front of Jeff Stelling’s ‘Soccer Saturday’, nervously chewing their fingernails, while waiting to see if Gloucester City can hold on to the fourth-minute goal they’ve just scored against AFC Fylde.

(Hey) Jude, however, is going for a sauna, a steak and a good long sleep as he attempts to put a day that he thought was going to be little more than a lazy mooch around the house and a one-person bedroom singalong to his favourite lyrics that finished up with a red old face, a perforated eardrum and a fifteen-centimetre Subway into some sort of context. After all, he’s just become the 86th person from Longlevens Junior School to represent GPSFA. And whatever else he goes on to achieve in life, he’ll always have that particular two-digit number tattooed into the lining of his long-term memory bank.

Gloucester A: Folley Senior; Nice Harry Mclarney, Hider Hayes, First-to-Arrive Vaile; Smiler Buckland, Captain Bennett, Captain Mann(er)ing, Folley Junior; Bobby Brooks.