History
06:26. The Groundsman’s sitting imperiously in the far corner of the eating room, nursing a cup of hot sweet tea and a list of his latest ailments, but no-one’s there to hear them. Coaches Wixey and Harris are still in ‘Nod’ and Father Five-at-a-time Vye is busy debating whether a visit to south London or an amble around the deserted aisles of the GL3 Tesco is his preferred option on this rather chilly mid-December morning.
06:49. It might be cold in Moreton Road, but Obieri is beaming his usual mile-wide beam, which is even wider than his normal dawn-breaking beam after mentally and correctly calculating that 1/3 ÷ 2/7 = 1 1/6 in just nine seconds flat, and all while we’re busy circumnavigating the outside lane of the Tredworth Road roundabout.
07:08. A return to the Home of Football reveals The Groundsman is still in situ, nursing a cup of cold sweet tea and regaling Young Sam (Austin) with a list of his current ailments. The naivety of youth has been laid bare in a simple question, ‘How are you?’ and the ensuing discourse (a big) part of the reason why the NHS revealed yesterday that it’s likely to be stretched to near-breaking point again this winter.
07:23. Triple R sounds like a WWE wrestler, but the Riverview Range Rover reveals only Myatt, shorn of shoes but replete of quiff and the Severn Vale charabanc is finally on the road for the first time in seven weeks. Coach Wilson is absent due to having to work on some multi-million-pound deal with some high street bank or other, a decision which casts serious doubts on his ability to prioritise his ‘things to do’ list effectively, so the front seat is shorn of ‘Fiendish Sudoku 2018’, last Christmas’s Times Cryptic crossword annual and his latest tome, ‘The Glory Days of the Third Reich’, a Teutonic fairy tale that’s signed on the inside cover by old Schicklgruber himself. Or so he claims.
Instead, his place is taken by The New Navigator (TNN), sometimes known as TBN (The Better Navigator) and occasionally as TON (The Only Navigator), though the latter acronym is more often used to describe his increase in mass during the fortnight immediately following the Christmas festivities.
07:40. Coaches Harris & Wixey eventually rack up to rescue Young Sam from his Advanced Anatomical lecture (Part 9) as the Girls’ Squad departs Longlevens with ANN (A New Navigator) of their own in the front pew of the Finlay Victoria; ANN, like TON in the ‘A’ Team bus, to her eternal credit, fails to make a single directional error during the entire motorway section of their 80-mile westbound trek to the dreaming spires of downtown Bridgend.
09:14. A ‘Toilet Five’ at Reading services is followed by an Average Speed Check section of motorway a mile or so from Maidenhead that has just about everything – big red cones, massive concrete blocks, narrow, cycle-wide lanes, signs that warn, signs that tell, signs that prohibit, big tall yellow photography poles, five thousand stationary diggers and pitifully slow traffic; the only things it doesn’t have is a workforce and Trotter’s Big Red Money Machine – which is a bit odd considering all the cameras that are dotted around the place.
09:41. Cobham Services. Myatt’s at the front of the Gregg’s queue, sausage roll in hand; Vye’s next, iced cake for breakfast; Jones contemplates the neighbouring Health Food café but plumps for KFC instead; Fieldhouse eats half a pastry before depositing the other half in ‘General Waste’; he thinks no-one’s seen, but he’s so very, very wrong; Obieri’s indecisive – ‘shall I, shan’t I?’ – goes for ‘shall’ – gone in one; beams widely. It’s twenty past ten and The Navigator points confidently in the direction of the exit; he gets that one right too.
11.06. Arrival at the ground after making three circuits of the property and listening to an equal number of renditions of ‘Football’s Coming Home,’ even if we’re going in the opposite direction. The Navigator blames the additional mileage on the lorry in front that we’ve followed since the motorway (‘Sams Gutters Ltd’ – the exclusion of the apostrophe on the bright red signage suggesting that limited is exactly what they are), but the repairs are clearly not taking place at Carshalton Boys College 3G, which is accessed via a concealed entrance around half a mile from the post code provided. Tactics people, very fiendish tactics.
11.39. The Head Coach is halfway through FA Warm-up Number 52, which seems to consist of some yellow cones, some white cones and ten gloved-up players attempting to imitate Millward’s ‘Knees Up Mother Brown’ routine. High Definition is less than impressed with what he sees as the footballing equivalent of line dancing, so we meander off to do some good old-fashioned catching (FA GKs Warm-up No 1 of 1) instead.
11.45. We start remarkably slowly and find ourselves one down for the third time in the last six games, the impressively dreadlocked Mafu receiving the freedom of north Sutton to finish neatly. Three minutes later however, Pathfinder picks out Obieri to right-foot the leveller and after Obieri’s drive is touched on to the near stick, Burgess’s right wing corner curls straight in at the back upright.
12.16. The eight visiting supporters enjoy the half time break gathered around Father Burgess’s ‘HG Wells-style’ goal-recording machine. There’s Mother & Kandahar-bound Father Fieldhouse, the former resplendent in her double-bobbled Siamese twin headwear, the other in a bobble-less pale blue, pale yellow and pale white hooped number; there’s Mother & Father Ted, evangelical to a fault until Mother Millward Brown’s soon-to-be faux pas; Father and Father of Father May are in attendance, but there’s not a Sherlock to be seen between them, while Father Jones the Coaches’ Assessor is also here, anxiously checking his FA online resources as he attempts to verify whether Warm-Up No 52 actually officially exists.
Five minutes after the interval, another Burgess corner and Obieri’s close range finish means that after four utterly miserable months, a training ground routine has finally come to fruition. It’s Fieldhouse next who picks out Obieri, who then picks out the top corner to complete a 67% right-footed hat trick and amazingly it’s 4-1 to the Glawwwwster boys.
Back come Sutton, Fear’s penalty following Mother Millward Brown’s rugby tackle and Mafu’s second bringing the score to 4-3 and the momentum has swung the home side’s way, but a trio of High Definition saves, including a fine stop low to his right, prevent the hosts from nabbing a dramatic equaliser. A modern-day Dickens might even write about a Tale of Two Goalkeepers, though the ending in this twenty first century version will be far more palatable than the original, rather gruesome outcome. With two minutes remaining the industrious Burgess is involved again, giving Obieri the opportunity to test both the strength of the net and the potential width of a beam in a one boy-one ball demonstration of perfect synergy.
12.55. The players seem to know more than the statisticians, but they’re right of course, and a remarkable twelfth consecutive win has broken the old record of eleven on the bounce, set twenty years ago in 1998/89. It’s been a real team effort; Fieldhouse ferreting, Wasp buzzing, Myatt scurrying, Millward knees-upping / no-messing, Kirk versatile-ing, Vye prompting, Caple Iron Man-ing, Jones hounding, Burgess leading, HD saving and Obieri scoring & beaming at almost the same point in time.
13.10. It’s over a week since WC lost anything, but there are side effects to most medications and almost every cure. Forget all that gumpf about apples and gravity; Isaac Newton’s third law of motion states unequivocally that, ‘For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.’ And as Myatt has become more thoughtful, more responsible and more independent following the recent introduction of the laminated A4 kit bag list, his water carrying abilities have declined in equal measure, meaning the drinks containers are almost left in the dugout. Someone suggests he may even become a scientist in later life, but the universally silent reaction to that one-off, somewhat random statement proves beyond any shadow of a doubt that Isaac Newton’s third epistle was at least one hundred per cent correct.
13.20. ‘Sopuru’s on fire,’ is the changing room song, and he certainly was. For any film buffs out there, The Towering Inferno comes to mind. Kit is returned to the big blue bag in various states – Number 5 (Myatt) is again inside out, as is Number 6 (Jones), and this after all the nice things written in last week’s column about the latter folding everything to perfection. Turncoat. Nothing nice has been written about the former however – not last week or indeed any other week, so no change there then. But just for once, on this historic day, it doesn’t matter a jot.
14.05. We’re back on the M25 and Fieldhouse has only asked the question, ‘How far it is to the services?’ twelve times so far. If he asks again, it’ll be thirteenth time unlucky. The going ranges from slow to very slow to not at all as the rain pours down and The Navigator resorts to taking photos through the windscreen wipers and posting them on the @GPSFAteams’ twitter account. Two hundred miles west, but on the very same motorway, the Girl-mobile is also moving at a similar, less than convincing, second-gear rate of knots back towards the Field of Dreams. And exactly half way in between, Young Sam is sprinting faster than either bus is chugging, in a ‘needs must’ turn of speed that’s linked inextricably to the term ‘escape’ and defying any ancient law of motion, Newton’s or otherwise.
15.27. Mother Millward Brown is struggling, so there’s an impromptu toilet break at Reading. Myatt wanders round for thirty seconds in the pouring rain with his jumper pulled over his lovingly-gelled quiff, before deciding there’s far too much water in the world already, returns to the relative comfort of the SV mini bus and puts his loo break on cross-legged hold for the time being.
16.19. The Oasis at last! There are few palm trees and even fewer camels (as Swindon Town are playing away and the County Ground just down the road is closed), but there’s a wave machine and slides, a coffee shop that doesn’t take cash and a very helpful front-of-house catering assistant who takes our order as the pool exit call is issued and serves the sausage & chips just as the troops re-enter the refectory.
17.55. We’re back on the A419, the last leg of our 240-mile round tour of southern England. There’s a revelation, ‘Herbie’s got a girlfriend’ / ‘I think she’s French,’ and a conspiracy theory, ‘Woody says that Sopuru says that Wasp says….,’ none of which is heard by Mother Millward Brown, who by now is fast asleep on his big red pillow. There’s a cacophony of song that initially seems to be emitting from Jones’s Mickey Mouse boy-doll, followed by ‘Football’s Coming Home’ for a second time, though on this occasion it’s almost geographically correct.
18.35. Back at the ranch. There’s no sign of the Girl-mobile, the Other New Navigator, Young Sam Austin, the Big Red Money Machine or Coach Wilson’s fiendish sudoku emporium. There’s no sign of The Groundsman either, though rumour has it he’s still sitting in the far corner of the eating room, waiting for both the kettle to boil and an audience with the next person who enlists on a GPSFA work experience programme, with a heightened sense of anticipation-cum-excitement. And there's also no sign of the Real Manager, who too is sitting in a heightened sense of anticipation-cum-excitement directly in front of the TV, meaning a celebratory half is most definitely Strictly off limits till post-9.00pm.
Meanwhile, The Chairman’s at home desperately trawling the internet for an inspirational quote with which to address the Highnam WI Church Hall committee in half an hour’s time. With Churchill, Schicklgruber and Genghis Khan all consigned to the desktop recycle bin and time fast running out, he stumbles across the great nineteenth century American industrialist, Henry Ford, who gives this considered opinion: ‘The only history that’s worth a dime, is that which you make yourself.’ And a little bit of history mes amies, is what you all made today.
Historic Gloucester: High Definition; Mother Brown, Iron Man, Slider; Isaac, Mickey, El Capitano, Issur Danielovitch; Beamer; Lettuce, Wasp.
06:49. It might be cold in Moreton Road, but Obieri is beaming his usual mile-wide beam, which is even wider than his normal dawn-breaking beam after mentally and correctly calculating that 1/3 ÷ 2/7 = 1 1/6 in just nine seconds flat, and all while we’re busy circumnavigating the outside lane of the Tredworth Road roundabout.
07:08. A return to the Home of Football reveals The Groundsman is still in situ, nursing a cup of cold sweet tea and regaling Young Sam (Austin) with a list of his current ailments. The naivety of youth has been laid bare in a simple question, ‘How are you?’ and the ensuing discourse (a big) part of the reason why the NHS revealed yesterday that it’s likely to be stretched to near-breaking point again this winter.
07:23. Triple R sounds like a WWE wrestler, but the Riverview Range Rover reveals only Myatt, shorn of shoes but replete of quiff and the Severn Vale charabanc is finally on the road for the first time in seven weeks. Coach Wilson is absent due to having to work on some multi-million-pound deal with some high street bank or other, a decision which casts serious doubts on his ability to prioritise his ‘things to do’ list effectively, so the front seat is shorn of ‘Fiendish Sudoku 2018’, last Christmas’s Times Cryptic crossword annual and his latest tome, ‘The Glory Days of the Third Reich’, a Teutonic fairy tale that’s signed on the inside cover by old Schicklgruber himself. Or so he claims.
Instead, his place is taken by The New Navigator (TNN), sometimes known as TBN (The Better Navigator) and occasionally as TON (The Only Navigator), though the latter acronym is more often used to describe his increase in mass during the fortnight immediately following the Christmas festivities.
07:40. Coaches Harris & Wixey eventually rack up to rescue Young Sam from his Advanced Anatomical lecture (Part 9) as the Girls’ Squad departs Longlevens with ANN (A New Navigator) of their own in the front pew of the Finlay Victoria; ANN, like TON in the ‘A’ Team bus, to her eternal credit, fails to make a single directional error during the entire motorway section of their 80-mile westbound trek to the dreaming spires of downtown Bridgend.
09:14. A ‘Toilet Five’ at Reading services is followed by an Average Speed Check section of motorway a mile or so from Maidenhead that has just about everything – big red cones, massive concrete blocks, narrow, cycle-wide lanes, signs that warn, signs that tell, signs that prohibit, big tall yellow photography poles, five thousand stationary diggers and pitifully slow traffic; the only things it doesn’t have is a workforce and Trotter’s Big Red Money Machine – which is a bit odd considering all the cameras that are dotted around the place.
09:41. Cobham Services. Myatt’s at the front of the Gregg’s queue, sausage roll in hand; Vye’s next, iced cake for breakfast; Jones contemplates the neighbouring Health Food café but plumps for KFC instead; Fieldhouse eats half a pastry before depositing the other half in ‘General Waste’; he thinks no-one’s seen, but he’s so very, very wrong; Obieri’s indecisive – ‘shall I, shan’t I?’ – goes for ‘shall’ – gone in one; beams widely. It’s twenty past ten and The Navigator points confidently in the direction of the exit; he gets that one right too.
11.06. Arrival at the ground after making three circuits of the property and listening to an equal number of renditions of ‘Football’s Coming Home,’ even if we’re going in the opposite direction. The Navigator blames the additional mileage on the lorry in front that we’ve followed since the motorway (‘Sams Gutters Ltd’ – the exclusion of the apostrophe on the bright red signage suggesting that limited is exactly what they are), but the repairs are clearly not taking place at Carshalton Boys College 3G, which is accessed via a concealed entrance around half a mile from the post code provided. Tactics people, very fiendish tactics.
11.39. The Head Coach is halfway through FA Warm-up Number 52, which seems to consist of some yellow cones, some white cones and ten gloved-up players attempting to imitate Millward’s ‘Knees Up Mother Brown’ routine. High Definition is less than impressed with what he sees as the footballing equivalent of line dancing, so we meander off to do some good old-fashioned catching (FA GKs Warm-up No 1 of 1) instead.
11.45. We start remarkably slowly and find ourselves one down for the third time in the last six games, the impressively dreadlocked Mafu receiving the freedom of north Sutton to finish neatly. Three minutes later however, Pathfinder picks out Obieri to right-foot the leveller and after Obieri’s drive is touched on to the near stick, Burgess’s right wing corner curls straight in at the back upright.
12.16. The eight visiting supporters enjoy the half time break gathered around Father Burgess’s ‘HG Wells-style’ goal-recording machine. There’s Mother & Kandahar-bound Father Fieldhouse, the former resplendent in her double-bobbled Siamese twin headwear, the other in a bobble-less pale blue, pale yellow and pale white hooped number; there’s Mother & Father Ted, evangelical to a fault until Mother Millward Brown’s soon-to-be faux pas; Father and Father of Father May are in attendance, but there’s not a Sherlock to be seen between them, while Father Jones the Coaches’ Assessor is also here, anxiously checking his FA online resources as he attempts to verify whether Warm-Up No 52 actually officially exists.
Five minutes after the interval, another Burgess corner and Obieri’s close range finish means that after four utterly miserable months, a training ground routine has finally come to fruition. It’s Fieldhouse next who picks out Obieri, who then picks out the top corner to complete a 67% right-footed hat trick and amazingly it’s 4-1 to the Glawwwwster boys.
Back come Sutton, Fear’s penalty following Mother Millward Brown’s rugby tackle and Mafu’s second bringing the score to 4-3 and the momentum has swung the home side’s way, but a trio of High Definition saves, including a fine stop low to his right, prevent the hosts from nabbing a dramatic equaliser. A modern-day Dickens might even write about a Tale of Two Goalkeepers, though the ending in this twenty first century version will be far more palatable than the original, rather gruesome outcome. With two minutes remaining the industrious Burgess is involved again, giving Obieri the opportunity to test both the strength of the net and the potential width of a beam in a one boy-one ball demonstration of perfect synergy.
12.55. The players seem to know more than the statisticians, but they’re right of course, and a remarkable twelfth consecutive win has broken the old record of eleven on the bounce, set twenty years ago in 1998/89. It’s been a real team effort; Fieldhouse ferreting, Wasp buzzing, Myatt scurrying, Millward knees-upping / no-messing, Kirk versatile-ing, Vye prompting, Caple Iron Man-ing, Jones hounding, Burgess leading, HD saving and Obieri scoring & beaming at almost the same point in time.
13.10. It’s over a week since WC lost anything, but there are side effects to most medications and almost every cure. Forget all that gumpf about apples and gravity; Isaac Newton’s third law of motion states unequivocally that, ‘For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.’ And as Myatt has become more thoughtful, more responsible and more independent following the recent introduction of the laminated A4 kit bag list, his water carrying abilities have declined in equal measure, meaning the drinks containers are almost left in the dugout. Someone suggests he may even become a scientist in later life, but the universally silent reaction to that one-off, somewhat random statement proves beyond any shadow of a doubt that Isaac Newton’s third epistle was at least one hundred per cent correct.
13.20. ‘Sopuru’s on fire,’ is the changing room song, and he certainly was. For any film buffs out there, The Towering Inferno comes to mind. Kit is returned to the big blue bag in various states – Number 5 (Myatt) is again inside out, as is Number 6 (Jones), and this after all the nice things written in last week’s column about the latter folding everything to perfection. Turncoat. Nothing nice has been written about the former however – not last week or indeed any other week, so no change there then. But just for once, on this historic day, it doesn’t matter a jot.
14.05. We’re back on the M25 and Fieldhouse has only asked the question, ‘How far it is to the services?’ twelve times so far. If he asks again, it’ll be thirteenth time unlucky. The going ranges from slow to very slow to not at all as the rain pours down and The Navigator resorts to taking photos through the windscreen wipers and posting them on the @GPSFAteams’ twitter account. Two hundred miles west, but on the very same motorway, the Girl-mobile is also moving at a similar, less than convincing, second-gear rate of knots back towards the Field of Dreams. And exactly half way in between, Young Sam is sprinting faster than either bus is chugging, in a ‘needs must’ turn of speed that’s linked inextricably to the term ‘escape’ and defying any ancient law of motion, Newton’s or otherwise.
15.27. Mother Millward Brown is struggling, so there’s an impromptu toilet break at Reading. Myatt wanders round for thirty seconds in the pouring rain with his jumper pulled over his lovingly-gelled quiff, before deciding there’s far too much water in the world already, returns to the relative comfort of the SV mini bus and puts his loo break on cross-legged hold for the time being.
16.19. The Oasis at last! There are few palm trees and even fewer camels (as Swindon Town are playing away and the County Ground just down the road is closed), but there’s a wave machine and slides, a coffee shop that doesn’t take cash and a very helpful front-of-house catering assistant who takes our order as the pool exit call is issued and serves the sausage & chips just as the troops re-enter the refectory.
17.55. We’re back on the A419, the last leg of our 240-mile round tour of southern England. There’s a revelation, ‘Herbie’s got a girlfriend’ / ‘I think she’s French,’ and a conspiracy theory, ‘Woody says that Sopuru says that Wasp says….,’ none of which is heard by Mother Millward Brown, who by now is fast asleep on his big red pillow. There’s a cacophony of song that initially seems to be emitting from Jones’s Mickey Mouse boy-doll, followed by ‘Football’s Coming Home’ for a second time, though on this occasion it’s almost geographically correct.
18.35. Back at the ranch. There’s no sign of the Girl-mobile, the Other New Navigator, Young Sam Austin, the Big Red Money Machine or Coach Wilson’s fiendish sudoku emporium. There’s no sign of The Groundsman either, though rumour has it he’s still sitting in the far corner of the eating room, waiting for both the kettle to boil and an audience with the next person who enlists on a GPSFA work experience programme, with a heightened sense of anticipation-cum-excitement. And there's also no sign of the Real Manager, who too is sitting in a heightened sense of anticipation-cum-excitement directly in front of the TV, meaning a celebratory half is most definitely Strictly off limits till post-9.00pm.
Meanwhile, The Chairman’s at home desperately trawling the internet for an inspirational quote with which to address the Highnam WI Church Hall committee in half an hour’s time. With Churchill, Schicklgruber and Genghis Khan all consigned to the desktop recycle bin and time fast running out, he stumbles across the great nineteenth century American industrialist, Henry Ford, who gives this considered opinion: ‘The only history that’s worth a dime, is that which you make yourself.’ And a little bit of history mes amies, is what you all made today.
Historic Gloucester: High Definition; Mother Brown, Iron Man, Slider; Isaac, Mickey, El Capitano, Issur Danielovitch; Beamer; Lettuce, Wasp.
