Friday

Three months ago, at the height of lockdown, one of our own bumped into Tony ‘The Lens’ Hickey in Hatherley Park in Cheltenham. He was busy making the most of the early Spring heatwave, happily photographing the remarkably early-flowering crocuses that lined the banks of the pond past which Wendy Craig would wander in the early 1980s sitcom, ‘Butterflies’. Afterwards though, he would sit, furrow-browed in his dark room-cum-loft in downtown Brockworth, gazing at the natural beauty that adorned his pictures while lamenting the fact that whatever offer, genuine or otherwise he put out there, the market for his flowery work would, at best, be rather limited.

But today he’s the happiest photographer in Christendom. Bath are due in town tomorrow and in the past eighteen years they’ve never had a team picture taken prior to visiting GL2, while it’s Caerphilly Girls’ first fixture of the season, so they definitely won’t have had a photo done. ‘Sixteen players? Are you sure?’ asks Bruce The Chef Forsyth, desperately trying to work out how much the extra five post-match sausage & chips will cost him. ‘Sixteen players? Brilliant!’ exhorts The Lens, doing a bit of quick mental multiplication which calculates that 16 x Whatever he wants to charge them minus income tax he’s highly unlikely to declare = a tidy little sum for an hour or so’s Saturday afternoon work.

The Groundsman, meanwhile, has made a miraculous recovery from last week’s intestinal issues, gall bladder stones and Yellowjack. And on this occasion, it’s not the knowledge, wisdom and sheer dedication of our great and glorious NHS that he has to thank for this sudden upturn in fortune. No, it was the lure of Thursday morning’s Cattle Market car boot sale that did for his entire list of medical ills the moment he picked up the phone and Fiesta Fred told him the clandestine meet was ‘Definitely On’: Just give the secret sign to the bloke reading the Daily Express outside McDonald’s Drive Thru and you’ll ‘Be in’. Secret signs? Dubious handshakes? Freemasons? Not in our fair city, surely?

Mason Liddell waltzes into OSP, blond hair swept back and smiling teeth glistening bright, a player just a GPSFA tattoo away from gaining a place in a low budget West Country boy band. Man for All Seasons shows no remorse for last week’s unpleasantness and continues to flaunt his disgustingly-coloured fluorescent boots in a vain attempt to impress people, while Triple B and Black Boots Dix look on in utter disgust. Monty Don’s taken possession of a black & yellow hose pipe, has completed the watering of his raised beds in double-quick time and for the second week running, arrives in eighth place. Which isn’t as good as it sounds as Sixty-Centimetres-Smith is nursing a bruised knee and is missing tonight’s session for a bit of much-needed R & R. The Hurricane has returned though, a disciplined, no-Playground-Football week meaning he passed his hastily-arranged fitness test which entailed pretending to tidy his room without displaying any traces of a limp while forcing the entire contents of the floor underneath his bed.

Saturday

It’s a bright but chilly morning with the 7.30 temperature registering only a Diana Ross on the dashboard’s digital display. JK is already outside the big green gates, doing his level best to disguise his chattering teeth and frostbitten fingertips. Today’s Stadium Building Team of Father Smith, Father Dix & Father Barnard – an assemblage that sounds more like an order of Greyfriars monks than a construction company – is hard at work by 7.45. At eight o’clock however, The Lens racks up and his non-stop efforts to firstly carry on a conversation with everyone hauling boards & irons and secondly continually arranging and rearranging the workers into a variety of compromising positions ‘for an early-morning picture’, means the stadium construction slows noticeably for a good 15-minute period. The Lens has calculated however, that 16 x Caerphilly photos + 10 x Bath photos + a few Gloucester City U12’s photos + possibly 3 x GL2 construction worker photos minus not a single penny in tax = A VERY tidy sum for a few hours’ weekend work.

Freemason’s leading the first part of the warm-up again, issuing a litany of assertive instructions while demonstrating some interesting-looking leg stretches and a few very odd ways of moving. Everyone seems motivated, primarily because since he’s been doing this, we’ve won. There’s adult intervention when it eventually comes to the ball work and a nice little sequence in one of the pass-and-spin lines: Eagle – Steadman – Liddell – Barnard in a hair – no hair – hair – no hair combination. It’s the little things….

Coach Tim (Kirk) has recently returned to the Bath Schools’ FA fold, having spent the last four years in Germany coaching in the Dortmund Academy and he lends a seemingly knowledgeable air to the away team’s dugout. The tactical whiteboard with the red & blue magnetic counters however seems to have a limited initial effect as Captain Cooper grabs his first goal of the season after just 43 seconds to give us the earliest of leads.

The visitors however level within two minutes, thanks to a combination of some good play down the right and defending which, to coin a common euphemism, ‘Leaves a little to be desired.’ Enough said. The ensuing fifteen minutes are pretty even, with Bath looking dangerous on the counter, but two thirds of the way through the half, a neat piece of skill and fine strike from Rhodes restores our advantage. Monty Don, (having now realised it’s actually British Summer Time and that the clocks changed a while back, meaning he wasn’t last on parade for the second day running), grabs two goals in as many minutes with a brace of powerful strikes, before dinking in his third and his team’s fifth. Rhodes and Captain Cooper have been complicit in two of the strikes with a pair of neat assists and it’s a six-minute hat trick for The Gardener, a timeline that will take some beating.

There are some good answers in the half-time Q & A session as to the difference between the first fifteen minutes and the second fifteen. All the outfield players contribute to the discussion, while Marvin chomps away contentedly in the back row in an attempt to empty the goody box, before Coach Wilson adds a few words of relative wisdom to summarise. And he pretty much succeeds. Marvin that is.

As the second period gets underway, Don is rewarded for his first half goal spree with a place on the bench and a plastic container full of Kit Kat wrappers and very little else. ‘Come on, Monty, get on the end of that cross,’ encourages Father Vince, blissfully unaware that The Don is fifty yards away from Two-Foot’s left-wing delivery, his mind far from the ups-and-downs of elite sport and more on his wilting Amaryllidaceae instead. ‘It always happens in early May,’ explains The Chef later on. ‘I have the same trouble with mine every year.’

The Gardener does eventually return however and promptly slots home number six for his fourth score of the day and third very different finish. Freemason puts a couple of efforts just wide – ‘Me ‘air was in me eyes,’ is his erudite explanation for his slightly askew Sat Nav, but there’s no mistaking the quality of his left-footed strike as he sweeps home Don’s cross for the home side’s seventh of the day.

Bath are rewarded for their neat build-up play with a second just before the end, but the four-goals-in-six-minutes first half salvo proves to be the main difference between the teams.

‘6 to 1,’ shouts Coach Wixey as the teams exit the field and enter the eating area, though no doors are involved in the transition from playing to consuming. ‘It was 7-2, actually,’ corrects the Hurricane, ‘I think you must have missed the last ten minutes.’ ‘6 to 1,’ repeats Coach Wixey, rightly ignoring the interruption. ‘After last week’s games, Paddy Power are offering 6 to 1 on a GPSFA Super Saturday treble.’ ‘2 for the price of 4,’ bellows The Photographer, desperate to get in on the act and show his maths is up to the same scratch as both Coach Wixey and The Hillview Hurricane. ‘Get 2 for the price of 4,’ he continues, as he senses, wrongly, that the Aquae Sulis fraternity won’t pick up on the latest in a long list of largely unsuccessful scams.

Caerphilly meanwhile have arrived with half the population of Ystrad Mynach and The Lens quickly recovers from his earlier disappointment and licks his lips with such regularity that he soon has too blobs of unsightly-looking foam loitering around the corners of his mouth. ‘Rabies,’ offers The Chef, a little louder than he might have done, a diagnosis that does little for The Photographer’s immediate sales.

Gloucester win the girls’ game with a bit to spare, but like their Bath counterparts, the away team’s players are perfectly mannered and a credit to both their parents and themselves. The patio socialising is the best bit of an already good day and despite The Chef muttering something about five loaves and two fishes being cheaper to administer, he realises that you wouldn’t need to deep fry this biblical feast and therefore his enjoyment of the occasion wouldn’t quite be the same.

‘We’re nearly there,’ smiles Coach Wixey, while vigorously rubbing his palms together, which is just what he did after 58 minutes last week, seconds before his team let everyone down by conceding a last-minute leveller.

Captain Woody from 2018/19 turns up and we re-watch the videos of some of his GPSFA goals that he has permanently stored on his phone. Apparently everybody, including Todd Fieldhouse from that team is growing exponentially, which is a little bit scary as everyone apart from TF and Archie Myatt were pretty big anyway.

It’s always a concern that you’ve been talking too much when you think the score’s 1-1 and it’s actually 4-2, but Coach Wixey’s dinner-plate smile is a shoe-in for a Yellow Team victory. ‘Super, Super Saturday,’ beams an exultant CW, giving a triple thumbs-up all at the same time, before getting on the blower to Paddy Power to claim his winnings.

Also dinner-plating unreservedly is The Lens. ‘Brilliant that Caerphilly crowd,’ he enthuses, the bottoms almost falling out of both his trouser pockets and his belt starting to buckle under the strain of a thousand South Walian pieces of silver.

And over in Barnwood Villas, Father Vince is not backward when coming forward to heap praise on the one and only four-goal gardener. ‘Wonderful finishes, Monty, all of them. I’ve just got a few extra tips for you….’ But sadly, however, just like a few hours previously, the Don is nowhere to be seen. A few tips on dinked finishes or half an hour nurturing his precious petunias? ‘No contest,’ muses a half-smiling Don, lifting up the watering can and beginning to pour.

Gloucester: Marvin; Hillview Hurricane, Man for All seasons, Black Boots Dix; Freemason, Captain Cooper, Rhodes, Triple B; Monty Don; Sixty Centimetres.