London Rules
Thursday
The second ever GPSFA girls’ tour of London started no differently to many other match days; the bags were heavier and the parents were huggier, but Myatt had already lost something beforehand and Everlate Howells was a record lowest time of four minutes behind the meet time.
The girls are also broken the bad news that all-time record goal scorer, Freya Boucher won’t be joining us. The Holiday Inn in Hemel Hempstead has refused to provide croissants for our stay after she cleaned out their complimentary breakfast buffet last time out. She’s since chained herself to a lamp post on Abbeymead Avenue in protest, with a sign reading, “RELEASE THE COMPLIMENTARY CROISSANTS” and has refused to budge until Holiday Inn complies with her demands.
Coach Katie breathes a sigh of relief as she sees that Coach Ed has a new Sat Nav holder, meaning she has one job fewer over the next three days, knowing full well that this means there will be no incorrect turns. Her new job on the way to Oxford is closely related to her actual job as she has to spend time explaining to the girls how 2 decimal numbers multiplied together will equal a decimal number. Chloe immediately goes into teacher’s pet mode and asks Katie to provide her with some extra Maths questions and then some harder ones once they’re all returned correctly (though it later transpires Everlate has been doing all the work for her with no credit given).
The services at Beaconsfield are filled to the brim with choices of almost any food you could want under one roof, apart from, as Mevans moans, a Subway. Healthy and nutritious lunchboxes are opened by many, whilst Myatt and Allegra do the opposite and devour a KFC meal each, at 11 o’clock in the morning. The spirit of Coach Jess lives within them on this tour as she nods approvingly back home in Gloucester.
We arrive at the Robert Clack Leisure Centre for our game against Barking & Dagenham and are greeted with a downpour and gale that Storm Dennis left behind on his trip eastwards. After last week’s heroics in similar conditions against Wokingham, Coach Ed has every faith the girls will not bat an eyelid; however they don’t deal with it well in the first twenty minutes. Myatt takes advantage of two mistakes to give us the lead but a mistake of our own in between means we hold a 2-1 lead at the break. Stern words are given to snap the girls into action, but another mix-up lets the hosts equalise just after the break. Some hesitant defending just before the following break means B & D have a 3-2 lead in spite of a huge improvement in the game. Izzie Morris is leading the team with a barnstorming performance full of grit and determination up front and she is rewarded for her efforts with a calmly taken finish into the bottom corner three minutes before the end. Sadly, the eagle-eyed linesman manages to spot that she was offside, so the game ends 3-2 to Barking & Dagenham.
It isn’t until the match ends that we fully appreciate the huge turnout of families for today’s game. A travelling crowd of twenty-four dwarfs the home support, which is recognised with admiration from Barking and Dagenham’s ever-friendly host coach, Chris.
The drive back to the hotel is, as usual, dominated by Foghorn Fortey’s vocals as the rest of the girls hold hands and pray that they’re not sharing a room with her. The moment of truth arrives and Izzie has been sacrificed to spend the next 48 hours sharing a room with the team’s resident annoyance in number 230. “Let’s go, Izzie, I’m going to tell you everything that’s happened so far in Love Island as loudly as I can.” Izzie looks back wide-eyed at the rest of the girls for help, but they all know there’s nothing they can do to save her. Number 229 will contain Chloe and Holly, with Chloe given the unenviable job of trying to train a Myatt child how to take care of themselves on a GPSFA tour. The Luxury Suite in number 231 with two double beds is awarded to Maddie and Charlotte. Number 233 has the same number of beds but three occupants meaning two of the girls will have to share for the next two nights. Megan, Evelyn and Lorna all take it on the chin with Lorna warning the others that she fidgets during the night, so it’s best she sleeps in one of the beds on her own. Her new roommates are gullible enough to believe her as she struggles to contain an evil cackle as her master plan comes together. Room 228 will receive a lovely relaxing time as it houses Birt and Ernie. Both have no idea why Coach Ed calls them that; apparently, a Sesame Street reference shows his age and as he is later to find out, it’s lost on Coach Katie too.
The evening meal takes place at Toby Carvery where the grown-ups chow down on an all-you-can-eat carvery alongside the grown-up girls on the team. The children’s table of Mevans, Morris, Myatt and Moanilocks eat a mixture of Mac and Cheese, Chicken Nuggets and Spaghetti Bolognese on plates the size of a saucer. Moanilocks moans that the dinner was too small after moaning that the carvery would be too big. As ever, she only wants something that is juuuuust right.
The evening’s entertainment is at Hollywood Bowl, where Coaches Ed and Katie draft the bowlers for their respective teams. The two coaches have starkly different coaching styles, Katie’s culture of praise ensures her bowlers all have a smile on their faces, whilst Ed’s culture of fear starts to grind out some spares and strikes. The early leader is Team Ed’s Chloe, who is soon tapped up by Katie to fill the spare spot on her team. Once the rest of Team Katie hear this, they soon realise the hollowness of Katie’s words and capitulate, resulting in a five-pin victory for an ever-gracious Coach Ed and the team of Lorna, Charlotte, Evelyn , Megan, Chloe and Birrt.
The girls are introduced to their diaries and the important DREAM marking system, where they’ve found out they have been under close eye all day. This means that lateness, forgotten kit and going to the toilet at dinner have all cost them attitude points, whilst some left behind peas, stuffing and garlic bread at dinner costing them eating points. A room inspection is also carried out by the team’s FRIRI (Fellow of the Royal Institute of Room Inspectors) Coach Ed, where Birrrt and Ernie receive the top score of 6. Bags not put away, lights on, clothes on the floor, kit not hung up are amongst many other crimes, resulting in scores of 3 (229 and 231), 4 (230) and 5 (233). The D(irector)RIRI of GPSFA, Steve, receives the reports via email, which maintain the same foul mood that he wakes up in every single day.
Friday
Morning breaks on the second day of the tour as Coaches Ed and Katie begin the 8am wake-up calls and are pleasantly surprised to find each and every girl dressed, showered and eagerly awaiting the start of today’s activities. The vertically-challenged room of 229 recount an adventurous story of having to build a human pyramid on top of the toilet in order to change the angle of the shower head. Meanwhile, the inhabitants of the Luxury Suite of 231 grumble that their shower is leaking water at the base. “We’ve not paid thousands of pounds for a suite with an inefficient shower that produces a water hazard on the floor,” they rightly complain. Charlotte thinks safety first and splashes herself from within the bath tub, whereas Mevans couldn’t care less for anyone else’s safety and has a shower in the traditional manner, with a foot- deep pool around the bath tub by the time she’s finished.
Before we can make our way to Wembley, we must do a couple of errands.
“When are we getting my hat?” moans Moanilocks for the fifty-fourth time since she realised last night that she had left her new cap in the Toby Carvery the night before. A quick stop down the road finds her cap in good health before anyone could strip it and sell it for parts. We also pop along to Hamid at the North Watford Laundrette, a new Twitter celebrity thanks to the advertisement of the GPSFA Twitter account the night before, who will be washing the soggy mess of yellow kit from Thursday’s game. Little does he know that having done such a good job, the ultimate creature of habit, Bob Owen, will now be using his services on the Thursday of every February half term to wash GPSFA football kit forevermore, whether he likes it or not.
We arrive at Wembley Way and make our way up to meet the A squad and their respective adults. Our tour guide looks and sounds like he’s currently performing as the Artful Dodger in the West End and is full of beans as he asks the girls dozens of questions about themselves and football in general. He’s got great charisma and we can see we’ll be getting our money’s worth with him. Straightaway, he shows his attentiveness as he notices Bob’s limp and offers him access to Wembley’s many lifts for the duration of the tour. An exceptionally warm offer that is returned with exceptional coldness, reminding Dodger of Fagin’s treatment of him on stage the night before.
Dodger takes us around the sights of the stadium as Tony the photographer insists on so many photographs that when we leave, there is a five-tour group queue waiting at the entrance due to the backlog. The coaches look on proudly as the girls, in their matching yellow tracksuit tops, smile in symmetry and achieve the perfect photo every single time within seconds, whereas the boys are in several states of undress, look surly and do the eternally annoying moment in group photos where at least one of them can’t help but check to see what everyone else is doing just as it’s taken.
The girls and boys split for lunch as the ladies are given a choice between McDonald’s and Subway. Ten of the girls are happy either way, but Moanilocks finds Subway too bready, and no lunch whatsoever not bready enough, but McDonald’s is juuuuust right. Mevans fumes as she is denied her second Subway of the tour. In protest, she orders the smallest meal out of the group yet, takes the longest amount of time to eat it, coldly glaring at Moanilocks as she eats every sesame seed off of her bun, one at a time. After that, the girls have a chance to part with their money in JD Sports as they spend a full forty minutes individually inspecting around twenty items of children’s clothing, whilst Coach Ed stereotypically sulks outside the dressing rooms whilst the girls kindly compliment one another on their purchases. Allegra drops the first attitude point of the day as she is caught eating her McFlurry in the shop after promising Katie she wouldn’t. Mevans smirks “Karma, my friend, Karma.”
Somewhere along the line, Everlate has managed to switch her watch with Coach Ed’s, meaning that we are on Howells time (GMT + 10 minutes) and are late to our game against St Albans. We’re sarcastically applauded onto the pitch by our army of twenty three supporters and head straight into the game with no warm up. There seems to be no ill effects as Gloucester make plenty of chances with Holly and Lorna both coming close on two occasions each and at the other end, Allegra has a fire in her belly as she grabs anything under knee height that moves inside her area, meaning she picks up Livvy, Chloe and Holly at different points in the first half too.
The second half provides some thrills, Everlate arrives on time to make some important tackles, Charlotte and Birrrrt make some positive runs down the right to stretch the opposition and Chloe has the best chance of the game as she makes the goalkeeper work down to her right from outside the area. There’s not enough quality on show from either team and the game ends in a rare goalless draw in youth football as the girls don’t quite show that nasty streak that you sometimes need to force a goal in.
Tonight’s meal will be held at the hotel as they have given us free use of the Indian buffet, a selection of chicken thighs and a salad bar. The girls have been told they can wear whatever they like and surprisingly six out of the eleven choose to wear something pink, maybe as a tribute to our bibs after missing a Friday night coaching session that evening. Mevans tells Coach Katie, “You actually look quite nice” in a way that make the ‘actually’ sounds like it’s doing a heck of a lot of work in the compliment. The gymnasts in the group are not fans of curry as Chloe, Livvy and Birrrrrt help themselves to the salad bar. Myatt sees the buffet as more of a tasting experience where she takes a single bite out of each item. Moanilocks complains the curry isn’t juuuuust right and after forcing one plate down, she makes up for lost time by going up for dessert on four occasions. The post-dinner conversation is dominated by Izzie’s pointless facts about broccoli and other such nonsense. Charlotte stares blankly and wishes she had taken advantage of the complimentary waiter service offered in the Luxury Suite.
The evening activity has been on the minds of the girls all day. Will they be ice-skating? Will they be taken on the London Eye? Will they have a late night bus tour of Central London? The reality is a little less glamorous as a box of ‘Five Second Rule’ is opened. The girls are in teams according to their rooms and the initial tepid greeting of a board game is replaced by an excitable and laughter-filled hour of tension and competition. Team 230 are the early leaders until they falter at naming “three countries in the Southern Hemisphere.” Naturally, Moanilocks complains that this question is unfair because they don’t know what the Southern Hemisphere is, whilst simultaneously missing the point of a trivia game. The eventual winners are Team 233 who use their numerical advantage along with their seniority to finish in first place. Even with the handicap of having Lorna, whose first answer that came to mind when asked to name three things beginning with the letter ‘T”, was “car.”
Diaries are filled out before bedtime and Coach Katie’s feedback seems to imply that Castle Hill have an excellent writing scheme at their school. Meanwhile, room checks are carried out by the FRIRI and scores have improved drastically. Unforgivably, each room’s bed covers are crumpled to lose a single point each. The incredulous reaction across all five rooms is that it would be impossible to avoid this. There are also cupboard doors not shut, bath mats on the floor, shower curtains not pulled back, toilet paper not flushed and a single hair in the sink not washed down. 233 scores 6, 229 scores 7, 228 and 231 score 8 and 230 is rewarded with a day of obsessive, compulsive tidying up with a score of 9. The girls have also shown great character when it comes to finishing their meals. Megan doesn’t find the eating competition challenging enough with one plate, so insists on seconds each time, while Chloe powers through to finish a sausage at breakfast in heroic fashion, reminiscent of a young Alex Knight in Jersey 2018. There was some panic over whether leaving bacon fat and ketchup will lose a point (it won’t) and they all maintain a perfect score of ten. Apart from Myatt, who loses eight.
Saturday
Surely on the second morning after two games, they’ll all still be in bed? Not even close. Some are dressed and ready for today’s game, some are still in their PJs, but all are bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and ready to attack the day. The ladies walk down to breakfast with Katie, while the FRIRI inspects rooms for the final time and miraculously not a single duvet is crumpled! 228, 229 and the Luxury Suite of 231 have all achieved a perfect 10/10 and even more impressive is that they are all Year 5s. 230 is spotless apart from they have left their newly packed bags in the hallway and 233 has a jacket on the table instead of hung up, so each scores a 9/10.
The FRIRI bounds down to breakfast after seeing such an improvement, but is stopped dead in his tracks when he sees his seat at the head of the table has been nicked by one of the kindest, most thoughtful and best behaved children he has ever come across - Olivia ‘Ernie’ Aldridge. And despite the scowls and glares, she has no intention of moving and is taking great delight in not doing so. The girls once again prove that they’re serious about their eating marks and make sure everything is cleaned off their plates. Mevans is getting her money’s worth this morning and goes back to the buffet multiple times, while Megan sticks to tradition with her solid two-plate effort. Allegra drops four eating marks for leaving four different items, but then provides the morning’s entertainment by insisting that Chloe times how long it takes her to eat a slice of watermelon. Ten times. As they make their way upstairs from the restaurant, ten girls duck under the ‘don’t walk through here’ rope except for one. “Wait, will they all lose an attitude point for doing that?” Coach Ed nods gravely and Megan fist pumps like Stuart Pearce at Euro 96 before joining him in taking the long way around, while she keeps all ten attitude points intact.
Before we leave, we check each room to see if they’ve left anything behind and an attitude point is taken off Mevans for forgetting the football she bought from the Wembley shop. Meanwhile, Myatt stays true to the family tradition on GPSFA tours and keeps up their 100% record of leaving things behind as a sock is found in the wardrobe. As we leave the reception desk we are thoroughly complimented by both duty managers on how well behaved and polite the girls have been during their stay. Not a single complaint from any other guests and we couldn’t agree more. Such a lovely thing to hear.
The girls have a big blonde surprise ahead of their cup semi final at Woking as Freya is waiting for them in the pavilion and has brought a big box of traditional half time oranges with her. She explains that she has ended her strike because the International Court of Human Rights is hearing her appeal about the ban on free croissants at Holiday Inn, Hemel Hempstead and, while they are going through the hundreds of pages of paperwork Freya has provided, have pleaded with her to return to her second home, the football pitch.
The game begins and Freya makes an impact by giving us an injection of speed from her fresh legs and the rest of the team begin to follow suit. Woking are under the cosh and are making silly mistakes as Gloucester try their best to carve out an opening. Against the run of play, Woking break down their left and put in a wicked cross which is slotted into the bottom corner. The girls show their resilience by responding within two minutes. A ball breaks to Izzie Morris on the edge of the Woking area where she’s faced with three defenders who are soon turned inside out as she beats one after the other before stabbing the ball with the outside of her foot over the keeper’s shoulder. It’s now become our current goal of the season, usurping Charlotte’s bullet header against Cardiff.
More pressure is put on Woking as the wind makes every ball forward turn the hosts towards their own goal. Freya capitalises on one of these as she hassles the defender until it breaks for her to bundle home with her left foot. After watching hundreds of attempts of the comedy show of Freya trying to use her left foot at training, this becomes such a memorable moment that the significance of this is mentioned in virtually every single match report in the girls’ diaries afterwards. Now sixty goals for GPSFA, fifty-nine with her right foot, one with her left.
The half time message is clear, we will be up against the wind and Woking won’t like being 2-1 down. As soon as we start, we realise this will be a hard job and it takes ten minutes before Woking take advantage of a scramble in the box to equalise. Within a couple of minutes they take the lead after a corner isn’t cleared and another couple of minutes later they score the second-best goal of the game as another cross is whipped in from the left and is side-foot volleyed at the near post. A devastating five-minute spell. The girls could have easily collapsed, but they start to limit Woking and keep the ball further away from their goal. Allegra, Charlotte, Livvy and Evelyn cope with the pressure in defence admirably and are determined to concede no more. Megan plays like someone who doesn’t want to be knocked out of a cup competition as she battles for every ball in midfield. Lorna and Birrrrrt keep us moving forward with forward passes and runs down the right. Myatt nibbles away at Woking’s defence like a Holiday Inn buffet and after all that, Freya scores, but is caught offside. As has been explained many a time this season, we can play well and lose and we can play badly and win and this is definitely a playing well but losing situation. Always disappointing to lose, particularly in a cup semi final, but the pride should always be in the performance first of all. Mistakes and moments of magic will happen and goals will go in at both ends, but being the best you can be is what GPSFA is all about.
The families sound like they’ve had a blast too, a table of twenty-four at Pizza Express, late night partying at the Premier Inn and a gymnastics competition amongst the siblings at midnight in the hotel reception. Your support was huge for the girls and they’ve loved seeing you at the games, cheering them on and giving them a pat on the back afterwards. Thank you.
We leave Woking feeling empty handed when it comes to football, but filled to the brim with stories, laughter, lessons learned and friendships cemented. Each girl arrives home with a huge smile, desperate to share their diaries with families and show off what they’ve been up to as many have described it as the time of their lives. Except for Mevans that is, because there wasn’t a Subway at Membury on the journey home.
The second ever GPSFA girls’ tour of London started no differently to many other match days; the bags were heavier and the parents were huggier, but Myatt had already lost something beforehand and Everlate Howells was a record lowest time of four minutes behind the meet time.
The girls are also broken the bad news that all-time record goal scorer, Freya Boucher won’t be joining us. The Holiday Inn in Hemel Hempstead has refused to provide croissants for our stay after she cleaned out their complimentary breakfast buffet last time out. She’s since chained herself to a lamp post on Abbeymead Avenue in protest, with a sign reading, “RELEASE THE COMPLIMENTARY CROISSANTS” and has refused to budge until Holiday Inn complies with her demands.
Coach Katie breathes a sigh of relief as she sees that Coach Ed has a new Sat Nav holder, meaning she has one job fewer over the next three days, knowing full well that this means there will be no incorrect turns. Her new job on the way to Oxford is closely related to her actual job as she has to spend time explaining to the girls how 2 decimal numbers multiplied together will equal a decimal number. Chloe immediately goes into teacher’s pet mode and asks Katie to provide her with some extra Maths questions and then some harder ones once they’re all returned correctly (though it later transpires Everlate has been doing all the work for her with no credit given).
The services at Beaconsfield are filled to the brim with choices of almost any food you could want under one roof, apart from, as Mevans moans, a Subway. Healthy and nutritious lunchboxes are opened by many, whilst Myatt and Allegra do the opposite and devour a KFC meal each, at 11 o’clock in the morning. The spirit of Coach Jess lives within them on this tour as she nods approvingly back home in Gloucester.
We arrive at the Robert Clack Leisure Centre for our game against Barking & Dagenham and are greeted with a downpour and gale that Storm Dennis left behind on his trip eastwards. After last week’s heroics in similar conditions against Wokingham, Coach Ed has every faith the girls will not bat an eyelid; however they don’t deal with it well in the first twenty minutes. Myatt takes advantage of two mistakes to give us the lead but a mistake of our own in between means we hold a 2-1 lead at the break. Stern words are given to snap the girls into action, but another mix-up lets the hosts equalise just after the break. Some hesitant defending just before the following break means B & D have a 3-2 lead in spite of a huge improvement in the game. Izzie Morris is leading the team with a barnstorming performance full of grit and determination up front and she is rewarded for her efforts with a calmly taken finish into the bottom corner three minutes before the end. Sadly, the eagle-eyed linesman manages to spot that she was offside, so the game ends 3-2 to Barking & Dagenham.
It isn’t until the match ends that we fully appreciate the huge turnout of families for today’s game. A travelling crowd of twenty-four dwarfs the home support, which is recognised with admiration from Barking and Dagenham’s ever-friendly host coach, Chris.
The drive back to the hotel is, as usual, dominated by Foghorn Fortey’s vocals as the rest of the girls hold hands and pray that they’re not sharing a room with her. The moment of truth arrives and Izzie has been sacrificed to spend the next 48 hours sharing a room with the team’s resident annoyance in number 230. “Let’s go, Izzie, I’m going to tell you everything that’s happened so far in Love Island as loudly as I can.” Izzie looks back wide-eyed at the rest of the girls for help, but they all know there’s nothing they can do to save her. Number 229 will contain Chloe and Holly, with Chloe given the unenviable job of trying to train a Myatt child how to take care of themselves on a GPSFA tour. The Luxury Suite in number 231 with two double beds is awarded to Maddie and Charlotte. Number 233 has the same number of beds but three occupants meaning two of the girls will have to share for the next two nights. Megan, Evelyn and Lorna all take it on the chin with Lorna warning the others that she fidgets during the night, so it’s best she sleeps in one of the beds on her own. Her new roommates are gullible enough to believe her as she struggles to contain an evil cackle as her master plan comes together. Room 228 will receive a lovely relaxing time as it houses Birt and Ernie. Both have no idea why Coach Ed calls them that; apparently, a Sesame Street reference shows his age and as he is later to find out, it’s lost on Coach Katie too.
The evening meal takes place at Toby Carvery where the grown-ups chow down on an all-you-can-eat carvery alongside the grown-up girls on the team. The children’s table of Mevans, Morris, Myatt and Moanilocks eat a mixture of Mac and Cheese, Chicken Nuggets and Spaghetti Bolognese on plates the size of a saucer. Moanilocks moans that the dinner was too small after moaning that the carvery would be too big. As ever, she only wants something that is juuuuust right.
The evening’s entertainment is at Hollywood Bowl, where Coaches Ed and Katie draft the bowlers for their respective teams. The two coaches have starkly different coaching styles, Katie’s culture of praise ensures her bowlers all have a smile on their faces, whilst Ed’s culture of fear starts to grind out some spares and strikes. The early leader is Team Ed’s Chloe, who is soon tapped up by Katie to fill the spare spot on her team. Once the rest of Team Katie hear this, they soon realise the hollowness of Katie’s words and capitulate, resulting in a five-pin victory for an ever-gracious Coach Ed and the team of Lorna, Charlotte, Evelyn , Megan, Chloe and Birrt.
The girls are introduced to their diaries and the important DREAM marking system, where they’ve found out they have been under close eye all day. This means that lateness, forgotten kit and going to the toilet at dinner have all cost them attitude points, whilst some left behind peas, stuffing and garlic bread at dinner costing them eating points. A room inspection is also carried out by the team’s FRIRI (Fellow of the Royal Institute of Room Inspectors) Coach Ed, where Birrrt and Ernie receive the top score of 6. Bags not put away, lights on, clothes on the floor, kit not hung up are amongst many other crimes, resulting in scores of 3 (229 and 231), 4 (230) and 5 (233). The D(irector)RIRI of GPSFA, Steve, receives the reports via email, which maintain the same foul mood that he wakes up in every single day.
Friday
Morning breaks on the second day of the tour as Coaches Ed and Katie begin the 8am wake-up calls and are pleasantly surprised to find each and every girl dressed, showered and eagerly awaiting the start of today’s activities. The vertically-challenged room of 229 recount an adventurous story of having to build a human pyramid on top of the toilet in order to change the angle of the shower head. Meanwhile, the inhabitants of the Luxury Suite of 231 grumble that their shower is leaking water at the base. “We’ve not paid thousands of pounds for a suite with an inefficient shower that produces a water hazard on the floor,” they rightly complain. Charlotte thinks safety first and splashes herself from within the bath tub, whereas Mevans couldn’t care less for anyone else’s safety and has a shower in the traditional manner, with a foot- deep pool around the bath tub by the time she’s finished.
Before we can make our way to Wembley, we must do a couple of errands.
“When are we getting my hat?” moans Moanilocks for the fifty-fourth time since she realised last night that she had left her new cap in the Toby Carvery the night before. A quick stop down the road finds her cap in good health before anyone could strip it and sell it for parts. We also pop along to Hamid at the North Watford Laundrette, a new Twitter celebrity thanks to the advertisement of the GPSFA Twitter account the night before, who will be washing the soggy mess of yellow kit from Thursday’s game. Little does he know that having done such a good job, the ultimate creature of habit, Bob Owen, will now be using his services on the Thursday of every February half term to wash GPSFA football kit forevermore, whether he likes it or not.
We arrive at Wembley Way and make our way up to meet the A squad and their respective adults. Our tour guide looks and sounds like he’s currently performing as the Artful Dodger in the West End and is full of beans as he asks the girls dozens of questions about themselves and football in general. He’s got great charisma and we can see we’ll be getting our money’s worth with him. Straightaway, he shows his attentiveness as he notices Bob’s limp and offers him access to Wembley’s many lifts for the duration of the tour. An exceptionally warm offer that is returned with exceptional coldness, reminding Dodger of Fagin’s treatment of him on stage the night before.
Dodger takes us around the sights of the stadium as Tony the photographer insists on so many photographs that when we leave, there is a five-tour group queue waiting at the entrance due to the backlog. The coaches look on proudly as the girls, in their matching yellow tracksuit tops, smile in symmetry and achieve the perfect photo every single time within seconds, whereas the boys are in several states of undress, look surly and do the eternally annoying moment in group photos where at least one of them can’t help but check to see what everyone else is doing just as it’s taken.
The girls and boys split for lunch as the ladies are given a choice between McDonald’s and Subway. Ten of the girls are happy either way, but Moanilocks finds Subway too bready, and no lunch whatsoever not bready enough, but McDonald’s is juuuuust right. Mevans fumes as she is denied her second Subway of the tour. In protest, she orders the smallest meal out of the group yet, takes the longest amount of time to eat it, coldly glaring at Moanilocks as she eats every sesame seed off of her bun, one at a time. After that, the girls have a chance to part with their money in JD Sports as they spend a full forty minutes individually inspecting around twenty items of children’s clothing, whilst Coach Ed stereotypically sulks outside the dressing rooms whilst the girls kindly compliment one another on their purchases. Allegra drops the first attitude point of the day as she is caught eating her McFlurry in the shop after promising Katie she wouldn’t. Mevans smirks “Karma, my friend, Karma.”
Somewhere along the line, Everlate has managed to switch her watch with Coach Ed’s, meaning that we are on Howells time (GMT + 10 minutes) and are late to our game against St Albans. We’re sarcastically applauded onto the pitch by our army of twenty three supporters and head straight into the game with no warm up. There seems to be no ill effects as Gloucester make plenty of chances with Holly and Lorna both coming close on two occasions each and at the other end, Allegra has a fire in her belly as she grabs anything under knee height that moves inside her area, meaning she picks up Livvy, Chloe and Holly at different points in the first half too.
The second half provides some thrills, Everlate arrives on time to make some important tackles, Charlotte and Birrrrt make some positive runs down the right to stretch the opposition and Chloe has the best chance of the game as she makes the goalkeeper work down to her right from outside the area. There’s not enough quality on show from either team and the game ends in a rare goalless draw in youth football as the girls don’t quite show that nasty streak that you sometimes need to force a goal in.
Tonight’s meal will be held at the hotel as they have given us free use of the Indian buffet, a selection of chicken thighs and a salad bar. The girls have been told they can wear whatever they like and surprisingly six out of the eleven choose to wear something pink, maybe as a tribute to our bibs after missing a Friday night coaching session that evening. Mevans tells Coach Katie, “You actually look quite nice” in a way that make the ‘actually’ sounds like it’s doing a heck of a lot of work in the compliment. The gymnasts in the group are not fans of curry as Chloe, Livvy and Birrrrrt help themselves to the salad bar. Myatt sees the buffet as more of a tasting experience where she takes a single bite out of each item. Moanilocks complains the curry isn’t juuuuust right and after forcing one plate down, she makes up for lost time by going up for dessert on four occasions. The post-dinner conversation is dominated by Izzie’s pointless facts about broccoli and other such nonsense. Charlotte stares blankly and wishes she had taken advantage of the complimentary waiter service offered in the Luxury Suite.
The evening activity has been on the minds of the girls all day. Will they be ice-skating? Will they be taken on the London Eye? Will they have a late night bus tour of Central London? The reality is a little less glamorous as a box of ‘Five Second Rule’ is opened. The girls are in teams according to their rooms and the initial tepid greeting of a board game is replaced by an excitable and laughter-filled hour of tension and competition. Team 230 are the early leaders until they falter at naming “three countries in the Southern Hemisphere.” Naturally, Moanilocks complains that this question is unfair because they don’t know what the Southern Hemisphere is, whilst simultaneously missing the point of a trivia game. The eventual winners are Team 233 who use their numerical advantage along with their seniority to finish in first place. Even with the handicap of having Lorna, whose first answer that came to mind when asked to name three things beginning with the letter ‘T”, was “car.”
Diaries are filled out before bedtime and Coach Katie’s feedback seems to imply that Castle Hill have an excellent writing scheme at their school. Meanwhile, room checks are carried out by the FRIRI and scores have improved drastically. Unforgivably, each room’s bed covers are crumpled to lose a single point each. The incredulous reaction across all five rooms is that it would be impossible to avoid this. There are also cupboard doors not shut, bath mats on the floor, shower curtains not pulled back, toilet paper not flushed and a single hair in the sink not washed down. 233 scores 6, 229 scores 7, 228 and 231 score 8 and 230 is rewarded with a day of obsessive, compulsive tidying up with a score of 9. The girls have also shown great character when it comes to finishing their meals. Megan doesn’t find the eating competition challenging enough with one plate, so insists on seconds each time, while Chloe powers through to finish a sausage at breakfast in heroic fashion, reminiscent of a young Alex Knight in Jersey 2018. There was some panic over whether leaving bacon fat and ketchup will lose a point (it won’t) and they all maintain a perfect score of ten. Apart from Myatt, who loses eight.
Saturday
Surely on the second morning after two games, they’ll all still be in bed? Not even close. Some are dressed and ready for today’s game, some are still in their PJs, but all are bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and ready to attack the day. The ladies walk down to breakfast with Katie, while the FRIRI inspects rooms for the final time and miraculously not a single duvet is crumpled! 228, 229 and the Luxury Suite of 231 have all achieved a perfect 10/10 and even more impressive is that they are all Year 5s. 230 is spotless apart from they have left their newly packed bags in the hallway and 233 has a jacket on the table instead of hung up, so each scores a 9/10.
The FRIRI bounds down to breakfast after seeing such an improvement, but is stopped dead in his tracks when he sees his seat at the head of the table has been nicked by one of the kindest, most thoughtful and best behaved children he has ever come across - Olivia ‘Ernie’ Aldridge. And despite the scowls and glares, she has no intention of moving and is taking great delight in not doing so. The girls once again prove that they’re serious about their eating marks and make sure everything is cleaned off their plates. Mevans is getting her money’s worth this morning and goes back to the buffet multiple times, while Megan sticks to tradition with her solid two-plate effort. Allegra drops four eating marks for leaving four different items, but then provides the morning’s entertainment by insisting that Chloe times how long it takes her to eat a slice of watermelon. Ten times. As they make their way upstairs from the restaurant, ten girls duck under the ‘don’t walk through here’ rope except for one. “Wait, will they all lose an attitude point for doing that?” Coach Ed nods gravely and Megan fist pumps like Stuart Pearce at Euro 96 before joining him in taking the long way around, while she keeps all ten attitude points intact.
Before we leave, we check each room to see if they’ve left anything behind and an attitude point is taken off Mevans for forgetting the football she bought from the Wembley shop. Meanwhile, Myatt stays true to the family tradition on GPSFA tours and keeps up their 100% record of leaving things behind as a sock is found in the wardrobe. As we leave the reception desk we are thoroughly complimented by both duty managers on how well behaved and polite the girls have been during their stay. Not a single complaint from any other guests and we couldn’t agree more. Such a lovely thing to hear.
The girls have a big blonde surprise ahead of their cup semi final at Woking as Freya is waiting for them in the pavilion and has brought a big box of traditional half time oranges with her. She explains that she has ended her strike because the International Court of Human Rights is hearing her appeal about the ban on free croissants at Holiday Inn, Hemel Hempstead and, while they are going through the hundreds of pages of paperwork Freya has provided, have pleaded with her to return to her second home, the football pitch.
The game begins and Freya makes an impact by giving us an injection of speed from her fresh legs and the rest of the team begin to follow suit. Woking are under the cosh and are making silly mistakes as Gloucester try their best to carve out an opening. Against the run of play, Woking break down their left and put in a wicked cross which is slotted into the bottom corner. The girls show their resilience by responding within two minutes. A ball breaks to Izzie Morris on the edge of the Woking area where she’s faced with three defenders who are soon turned inside out as she beats one after the other before stabbing the ball with the outside of her foot over the keeper’s shoulder. It’s now become our current goal of the season, usurping Charlotte’s bullet header against Cardiff.
More pressure is put on Woking as the wind makes every ball forward turn the hosts towards their own goal. Freya capitalises on one of these as she hassles the defender until it breaks for her to bundle home with her left foot. After watching hundreds of attempts of the comedy show of Freya trying to use her left foot at training, this becomes such a memorable moment that the significance of this is mentioned in virtually every single match report in the girls’ diaries afterwards. Now sixty goals for GPSFA, fifty-nine with her right foot, one with her left.
The half time message is clear, we will be up against the wind and Woking won’t like being 2-1 down. As soon as we start, we realise this will be a hard job and it takes ten minutes before Woking take advantage of a scramble in the box to equalise. Within a couple of minutes they take the lead after a corner isn’t cleared and another couple of minutes later they score the second-best goal of the game as another cross is whipped in from the left and is side-foot volleyed at the near post. A devastating five-minute spell. The girls could have easily collapsed, but they start to limit Woking and keep the ball further away from their goal. Allegra, Charlotte, Livvy and Evelyn cope with the pressure in defence admirably and are determined to concede no more. Megan plays like someone who doesn’t want to be knocked out of a cup competition as she battles for every ball in midfield. Lorna and Birrrrrt keep us moving forward with forward passes and runs down the right. Myatt nibbles away at Woking’s defence like a Holiday Inn buffet and after all that, Freya scores, but is caught offside. As has been explained many a time this season, we can play well and lose and we can play badly and win and this is definitely a playing well but losing situation. Always disappointing to lose, particularly in a cup semi final, but the pride should always be in the performance first of all. Mistakes and moments of magic will happen and goals will go in at both ends, but being the best you can be is what GPSFA is all about.
The families sound like they’ve had a blast too, a table of twenty-four at Pizza Express, late night partying at the Premier Inn and a gymnastics competition amongst the siblings at midnight in the hotel reception. Your support was huge for the girls and they’ve loved seeing you at the games, cheering them on and giving them a pat on the back afterwards. Thank you.
We leave Woking feeling empty handed when it comes to football, but filled to the brim with stories, laughter, lessons learned and friendships cemented. Each girl arrives home with a huge smile, desperate to share their diaries with families and show off what they’ve been up to as many have described it as the time of their lives. Except for Mevans that is, because there wasn’t a Subway at Membury on the journey home.
