‘It’s a funny old game,’ as Greavsie never tired of saying. Despite accruing eleven welcome points from Wednesday’s selected fixtures, we’re still languishing in 5th place in the GPSFA Coaches’ Sky Sports Super Six League, a competition with all the glitz and glamour of the not-at-all-missed Anglo-Italian Cup. Nothing strange about the 5th position, but Del Boy ‘The Lens’ Trotter is sitting proudly atop the early-morning, 4th December table, which in itself is a huge cause for concern.

What does Del Boy know about football, apart from being a season ticket holder at New Meadow Park, a long-term follower of Tranmere Rovers FC and official photographer to the rich and famous – well, not that rich and famous, but any of the visiting parents he can usher into the eating room at GL2 and flog team photos at a fiver a time to. At least Coach Harris is well adrift at the bottom of the Super Six listing, so at least in this respect, the table doesn’t lie.

Less surprising this week than Trotter’s unlikely status is the news that The Groundsman, having staged an immediate recovery from his recent bout of Trypanosomiasis when he found out there was a Car Boot Sale taking place just up from the Gloucester Old Spot in downtown Dursley, has fallen over in his back garden and ‘smashed’ his right knee. The damage was apparently confirmed sixty minutes later in A & E, but quite how he got there, as he claims he couldn’t move at all, is anyone’s guess. The Chef has kindly agreed to get to GL2 not long after the Witching Hour on Saturday morning to mark out the pitch, so at least the lines-people will have some idea of where they need to wander.

Also taking place this week are the County Inter-School 7-a-sides, with OSP the no-travel venue much appreciated by the local Gloucester schools. Hempsted end third in the freezing cold girls’ tournament on Monday, Birdlip just miss out on penalties in the much warmer Small Schools’ event on Tuesday and Longlevens eventually finish third in the absolutely perishing Large Schools’ competition on Thursday. All is going well with the schedule until one of the refs falls off a ladder on Wednesday evening, meaning a late dust-off for the long-boxed Acme Thunderer, a tooter last seen in competitive action in a school production that required a policeman’s whistle around nine years ago. The tournament is followed by a lot of frantic hand-wringing designed to delay the onset of a bout of potentially life-threatening hypothermia and a wodge of pretty disappointing feedback. A miserly score of 3 out of 10 is handed out from Coach Harris, who is masquerading as the officials’ match assessor, says it all really, but whose idea is it anyway that you’ve got to be able to see, hear and move to referee a game of U11 football?

Saturday morning at GL2 and The Chef runs the white lines around the pitch, the Welfare Officer factors in an early-morning visit to drop off the flapjacks (then leaves with six still in his pocket. ‘For the Family’, he says, ninety seconds before pulling up on the side of Church Road and scoffing the lot), the Vice Chairman’s slaving over a hot urn in the GPSFA kitchen and The Lens is rehearsing his latest sales pitch, which goes something like: ‘Roll up, roll up; two for the price of five. Get your Christmas bargains here.’

Vaile, who’s currently side-lined with the debilitating effects of ‘Long Covid’ has brought his rather fine hairdo along to watch, while The Model is flaunting his on the front of the unsurprisingly hard-to-shift match programmes. Mother Hanlon however racks up and buys a couple to double the sales, followed by Father Middlecote, who grabs three of his own for equally blood group reasons.

Coach Stalley has gamely driven back from Essex to be in attendance today and celebrates making GL2 in plenty of time by leading the mid-morning warm-up. He’s implementing the FA’s Pre-Match Routine No 24, which is the only one that survived the incessant downpour at Newbury thirteen months ago. It’s a long story and is only worth mentioning because, if he leads another pre-match session, it’s highly likely to follow the same basic routine as this one, the simple reason being that the other ninety-nine dissolved into a soggy mess thirteen months ago and will never be acted out again.

Plymouth are a fine outfit and move the ball from side to side with aplomb. We defend impressively as a collective however, with the midfield getting back to support McLarney/Buckland, Hayes and Hanlon and limiting the visitors to a handful of first-half opportunities. From one such chance, Hayes does very well to clear off the line, meaning the chocolate digestives, currently available at half price from Innsworth Tesco, taste considerably sweeter than they might otherwise have done.

The second period follows a similar theme to the first – there are three fine saves from Folley, though Clifford too has a couple of efforts which threaten the Plymouth goal at the other end. Bennett and Clifford, flanked by Manning, White and McLarney battle away relentlessly throughout the second half, while Brooks, despite living off scraps, forages manfully.

With nine minutes to go, however, Gloucester’s resistance is finally broken and when the whistle eventually blows, Lidstone’s strike is the only numerical difference between the sides. The players are disappointed at the end, which is good, but they should each be extremely satisfied with the effort and application they put in to compete for sixty non-stop minutes against a technically very good Devonian side. From the debacle of Wolverhampton to the closeness of today, we’ve hopefully become competitive in a way that we can stay in games against the stronger teams and do a little bit better than that against some of the others.

All in all, then, with the Bs winning for the first time in eight, a highly competitive display versus a skilful Plymouth outfit and a 2-0 win for the mighty Red & Yellow Tigers (I know, I know) of Gloucester City against Spennymoor, it’s been a pretty good footballing day. And at 5.15, it gets even better. Five points from Southampton 1 Brighton 1, five points from Newcastle 1 Burnley 0 and five points from Barnsley 1 Huddersfield 1 help towards a bumper nineteen-point Sky Sports Super Six early December harvest. We’re up to third, only eleven points off top spot and things are finally falling into place. Everywhere.

Gloucester A: Folley; McLarney, Hayes, The Model; White, Clifford, Bennett, Manning; Buckland; Brooks. Physio: Vaile