Rhyming Slang
The Groundsman has surpassed himself this week, having suffered zero relapses in not only fixing the protective perspex to the new visitors’ changing room ‘Welcome’ sign (with a little help from The Chef), but also extending the black & yellow theme to the seats in the inner sanctum, a room that the door sign proclaims is ‘home’ - which for some of us, it really is.
The seventy five pitchside advertising boards are almost up before the first shafts of anything other than darkness permeate the atmosphere around GL2, as Father Vye and Father Burgess are in overdrive and cruising Formula One-like around the evolving perimeter barrier. Duke of Wellingtons move piston-like across the Tom Jones, six-at-a-time 4 by 1 boards are carried on uncomplaining Loaves of Bread and dozens of metal spikes are distributed in exemplary two-by-two Noah’s Ark fashion. If Carlsberg ever considered doing stadium building….
Father Ted is absent today due to suffering the after-effects of a Friday evening church recital and the ensuing wine tasting soiree that usually accompanies events of this nature, while Father Jones’ endeavours on his most recent ‘look-like-a, talk-like-a, dress-like-a, move-like-a’ coaching course have rendered him unfit for manual labour of any description this early December morning.
The forecasted showers have thankfully currently turned their attention to Bristol and other nearby urban areas equally deserving of their unwelcome presence (though Wainlode remains uncannily dry for some unbeknown reason), so The Groundsman takes advantage of this rare spell of dryness and upsets the neighbours by noisily rolling the pitch in preparation for the morning’s upcoming action.
The pre-match team talk focuses on the unacceptable variations in the players’ footwear and the horrendous example offered by El Capitano, who insists on wearing the dreadful pink and white slippers he won in last September’s ‘End of Summer’ M & S raffle draw. They were the booby prize. Last season’s skipper, Billy Ballet Shoes, also set a dreadful example to his initially loyal subjects, so there’s clearly an issue with the apex of the playing staff’s hierarchy that needs to be raised with the apex of the association’s hierarchy, but The Chairman’s temporarily unavailable due to being hard at work in the kitchen, particularly when there’s no-one waiting to be served.
Issur Danielovitch is in second spot in the horrid-boot stakes with an almost equally hideous pair of fluorescent greens; Obieri meanwhile sports a duo of bright oranges, the left one having a reinforced steel plate inserted where normal boots have laces, while Iron Man looks anything but as he models a brace of ivory-coloured Daisy Roots. Millward’s not quite so bad in dull greys, while High Definition and WC escape the wrath of the all-seeing inspectorate due to a lack of j-cloths and boot polish in downtown Norton, meaning their horribly garish orange things look remarkably like proper boots should look, as they’re covered in an inch and a half of dried mud. Jones, Lettuce, Wasp and Slider are the coaches’ favourite players by a country mile, due to wearing traditional black and being rightly proud to do so.
The Yellow Team sets the tone for the morning with admirable victories over St Albans Blues and Sutton Coldfield Stripes and the ‘A’ Side starts quickly too, taking an early lead when Iron Man heads in Burgess’s left wing corner with just eight minutes on the Dickory Dock. Back come The Saints however to level from close range after the home defence does a David Copperfield and allows the visitors’ left winger to skip through a number of seemingly invisible tackles; the away team’s officials celebrate the goal by simultaneously leaping from their big blue bench then sinking three and a half feet the moment they return to their original positions.
It’s a proper game now, end to end and highly competitive into the bargain. Vye acquits himself well in his fifth different position of the season before moving into a more familiar midfield area, while Kirk does the same before smoothly shifting in the opposite direction. Jones and Burgess are again setting the standard in the middle of the park before Lettuce and Wasp enter the arena, with Lettuce almost immediately winning the free kick from which Burgess in-offs via an outstretched (orange) boot to restore our one-goal lead, meaning a very evenly contested and pretty breathless first period ends with the B & Ys holding a narrow one-goal advantage.
After the jaffas and jellies, a far post header from Slider precedes a second St Albans goal, prompting (Colonel) Sanders, the St Albans manager to ‘do a Groundsman’ and upset the neighbours for a second time this morning, by issuing a Churchillian call to arms that is transmitted in word-perfect format to the lottery ticket queue in the Cheltenham Road Co-op half a mile east of here.
His joy is short-lived however as Vye slides in Obieri to find the bottom corner and Burgess adds number five by drilling home a fine pull-back from Myatt. Back up the other end and another St Albans attack is thwarted by an excellent tackle from Millward, who has spent the last fortnight perfecting a ‘Knees up Mother Brown’ approach to controlling a football before orchestrating a perfectly choreographed ‘Peter Kay’ method of distributing it, a manoeuvre more commonly referred to as, ‘Av it’.
Wasp buzzes contentedly alongside Son of Father Ted and the aforementioned Mother, while the redoubtable HD displays a clarity of purpose that Virgin Media delight in charging an arm and a leg for, as any further threats to the Gloucester goals-against column is satisfactorily nullified.
It’s been a good-to-watch encounter, it’s eleven on the bounce and the mood in the inner sanctum is upbeat, where there’s an interesting variety of ways in which to return shirts, shorts and socks to the big blue bag on display. Myatt throws (inside out), Jones folds, Mother Brown lobs, HD places, Kirk ignores and Lettuce drops their kit in or around the Scandinavian Frakta before fastening their buttons and clipping their ties and heading one-by-one to the chicken nugget, fruit-free zone.
The atmosphere outside on the patio area is also chirpy and satisfyingly jovial. Myatt has remembered to pack everything and leave nothing for the first time in his entire ten-and-a-half-year existence, while Mother Fieldhouse, not wishing to be outdone by Mother May’s Friday evening Oxstalls Christmas alternative to her usual Sherlock Holmes, has ditched the Siamese double-bobble for an appropriately seasonal ‘Holly Jolly Xmas’ number. Mother Wasp is absent on this occasion however, due to a Saturday morning being wisely spent in British Home Stores as she seeks to add to her current rather limited two-hat collection in time for the next instalment of irreverent musings.
Thirty minutes later and the Home of Football is almost deserted. The Photographer and Chairman have perfected their excuses / reasons for not coming to the Hartwell & Spiers this afternoon and their reticence is well founded as it turns out to be an afternoon that’s not quite a ‘Thriller in Manilla’, but there again, it was never really going to be.
Both Hampton & Richmond are the visitors, the weather’s miserable and the game is worse; there are no fried onions (‘Aven’t ‘ad time, mate’) and the overcooked burger’s pedigree horse. There’s a great typo in the programme that no-one’s seen fit to amend, despite the fact that this is the season’s eleventh edition (‘Simple, beautiful food. The finest ingredients. Lovingly prepared. Severd by happy people’) and the world’s greatest (though grammatically incorrect) football flag honouring a former Gloucester City striker (‘Adey Mings, but he don’t care’) is doing its utmost to hang on to the windswept perimeter fence. Pat, Tommy Morrissey’s (GPSFA 2011/12) granddad offers his thoughts on what’s happening on the other side of the pitchside barrier, but his in-depth, eruditely expressed views are best not printed this side of the 9 o’clock watershed. The worst bit though is that the manager’s post-match interview with the assembled one-man media panel suggests he thinks the team’s played well, which is a complete and utter mystery to the three saddos who bother to listen to it.
Toddy’s thoughts however are somewhat symptomatic of this day of rather odd happenings. The Groundsman’s been the picture of health & happiness – with both things taking place at the same time; The Photographer’s included all four of the St Albans coaches in their Christmas-hats team picture, thus reducing the visiting parents’ inclination to part with a fiver from likely to nil, while Myatt Junior has returned to Riverview with some boots and some shin pads and a waterproof and a warm-up top, and some of these items may even be his own.
As they might well say in the snug at the Queen Vic, ‘You’d never Adam & Eve it.’ And nor would we.
Gloucester: High Definition; Mother Brown, Iron Man, Slider; WC, Lawrence, Pathfinder, Issur Danielovitch; TGS; Lettuce, Wasp.
The seventy five pitchside advertising boards are almost up before the first shafts of anything other than darkness permeate the atmosphere around GL2, as Father Vye and Father Burgess are in overdrive and cruising Formula One-like around the evolving perimeter barrier. Duke of Wellingtons move piston-like across the Tom Jones, six-at-a-time 4 by 1 boards are carried on uncomplaining Loaves of Bread and dozens of metal spikes are distributed in exemplary two-by-two Noah’s Ark fashion. If Carlsberg ever considered doing stadium building….
Father Ted is absent today due to suffering the after-effects of a Friday evening church recital and the ensuing wine tasting soiree that usually accompanies events of this nature, while Father Jones’ endeavours on his most recent ‘look-like-a, talk-like-a, dress-like-a, move-like-a’ coaching course have rendered him unfit for manual labour of any description this early December morning.
The forecasted showers have thankfully currently turned their attention to Bristol and other nearby urban areas equally deserving of their unwelcome presence (though Wainlode remains uncannily dry for some unbeknown reason), so The Groundsman takes advantage of this rare spell of dryness and upsets the neighbours by noisily rolling the pitch in preparation for the morning’s upcoming action.
The pre-match team talk focuses on the unacceptable variations in the players’ footwear and the horrendous example offered by El Capitano, who insists on wearing the dreadful pink and white slippers he won in last September’s ‘End of Summer’ M & S raffle draw. They were the booby prize. Last season’s skipper, Billy Ballet Shoes, also set a dreadful example to his initially loyal subjects, so there’s clearly an issue with the apex of the playing staff’s hierarchy that needs to be raised with the apex of the association’s hierarchy, but The Chairman’s temporarily unavailable due to being hard at work in the kitchen, particularly when there’s no-one waiting to be served.
Issur Danielovitch is in second spot in the horrid-boot stakes with an almost equally hideous pair of fluorescent greens; Obieri meanwhile sports a duo of bright oranges, the left one having a reinforced steel plate inserted where normal boots have laces, while Iron Man looks anything but as he models a brace of ivory-coloured Daisy Roots. Millward’s not quite so bad in dull greys, while High Definition and WC escape the wrath of the all-seeing inspectorate due to a lack of j-cloths and boot polish in downtown Norton, meaning their horribly garish orange things look remarkably like proper boots should look, as they’re covered in an inch and a half of dried mud. Jones, Lettuce, Wasp and Slider are the coaches’ favourite players by a country mile, due to wearing traditional black and being rightly proud to do so.
The Yellow Team sets the tone for the morning with admirable victories over St Albans Blues and Sutton Coldfield Stripes and the ‘A’ Side starts quickly too, taking an early lead when Iron Man heads in Burgess’s left wing corner with just eight minutes on the Dickory Dock. Back come The Saints however to level from close range after the home defence does a David Copperfield and allows the visitors’ left winger to skip through a number of seemingly invisible tackles; the away team’s officials celebrate the goal by simultaneously leaping from their big blue bench then sinking three and a half feet the moment they return to their original positions.
It’s a proper game now, end to end and highly competitive into the bargain. Vye acquits himself well in his fifth different position of the season before moving into a more familiar midfield area, while Kirk does the same before smoothly shifting in the opposite direction. Jones and Burgess are again setting the standard in the middle of the park before Lettuce and Wasp enter the arena, with Lettuce almost immediately winning the free kick from which Burgess in-offs via an outstretched (orange) boot to restore our one-goal lead, meaning a very evenly contested and pretty breathless first period ends with the B & Ys holding a narrow one-goal advantage.
After the jaffas and jellies, a far post header from Slider precedes a second St Albans goal, prompting (Colonel) Sanders, the St Albans manager to ‘do a Groundsman’ and upset the neighbours for a second time this morning, by issuing a Churchillian call to arms that is transmitted in word-perfect format to the lottery ticket queue in the Cheltenham Road Co-op half a mile east of here.
His joy is short-lived however as Vye slides in Obieri to find the bottom corner and Burgess adds number five by drilling home a fine pull-back from Myatt. Back up the other end and another St Albans attack is thwarted by an excellent tackle from Millward, who has spent the last fortnight perfecting a ‘Knees up Mother Brown’ approach to controlling a football before orchestrating a perfectly choreographed ‘Peter Kay’ method of distributing it, a manoeuvre more commonly referred to as, ‘Av it’.
Wasp buzzes contentedly alongside Son of Father Ted and the aforementioned Mother, while the redoubtable HD displays a clarity of purpose that Virgin Media delight in charging an arm and a leg for, as any further threats to the Gloucester goals-against column is satisfactorily nullified.
It’s been a good-to-watch encounter, it’s eleven on the bounce and the mood in the inner sanctum is upbeat, where there’s an interesting variety of ways in which to return shirts, shorts and socks to the big blue bag on display. Myatt throws (inside out), Jones folds, Mother Brown lobs, HD places, Kirk ignores and Lettuce drops their kit in or around the Scandinavian Frakta before fastening their buttons and clipping their ties and heading one-by-one to the chicken nugget, fruit-free zone.
The atmosphere outside on the patio area is also chirpy and satisfyingly jovial. Myatt has remembered to pack everything and leave nothing for the first time in his entire ten-and-a-half-year existence, while Mother Fieldhouse, not wishing to be outdone by Mother May’s Friday evening Oxstalls Christmas alternative to her usual Sherlock Holmes, has ditched the Siamese double-bobble for an appropriately seasonal ‘Holly Jolly Xmas’ number. Mother Wasp is absent on this occasion however, due to a Saturday morning being wisely spent in British Home Stores as she seeks to add to her current rather limited two-hat collection in time for the next instalment of irreverent musings.
Thirty minutes later and the Home of Football is almost deserted. The Photographer and Chairman have perfected their excuses / reasons for not coming to the Hartwell & Spiers this afternoon and their reticence is well founded as it turns out to be an afternoon that’s not quite a ‘Thriller in Manilla’, but there again, it was never really going to be.
Both Hampton & Richmond are the visitors, the weather’s miserable and the game is worse; there are no fried onions (‘Aven’t ‘ad time, mate’) and the overcooked burger’s pedigree horse. There’s a great typo in the programme that no-one’s seen fit to amend, despite the fact that this is the season’s eleventh edition (‘Simple, beautiful food. The finest ingredients. Lovingly prepared. Severd by happy people’) and the world’s greatest (though grammatically incorrect) football flag honouring a former Gloucester City striker (‘Adey Mings, but he don’t care’) is doing its utmost to hang on to the windswept perimeter fence. Pat, Tommy Morrissey’s (GPSFA 2011/12) granddad offers his thoughts on what’s happening on the other side of the pitchside barrier, but his in-depth, eruditely expressed views are best not printed this side of the 9 o’clock watershed. The worst bit though is that the manager’s post-match interview with the assembled one-man media panel suggests he thinks the team’s played well, which is a complete and utter mystery to the three saddos who bother to listen to it.
Toddy’s thoughts however are somewhat symptomatic of this day of rather odd happenings. The Groundsman’s been the picture of health & happiness – with both things taking place at the same time; The Photographer’s included all four of the St Albans coaches in their Christmas-hats team picture, thus reducing the visiting parents’ inclination to part with a fiver from likely to nil, while Myatt Junior has returned to Riverview with some boots and some shin pads and a waterproof and a warm-up top, and some of these items may even be his own.
As they might well say in the snug at the Queen Vic, ‘You’d never Adam & Eve it.’ And nor would we.
Gloucester: High Definition; Mother Brown, Iron Man, Slider; WC, Lawrence, Pathfinder, Issur Danielovitch; TGS; Lettuce, Wasp.
