Paddy Power
Wokingham, our nemesis of the past two seasons courtesy of a played four, lost four, scored none return is on the horizon, but for the time being, WC is taking his new-found pseudonym to new heights. Not content with his usual pre and post-match water carrying duties, he’s now decided to leave the top off his drinks bottle and carry copious amounts of H2O around in the bottom of his kit bag, along with his boots, shinners, warm up top and fancy new showerproof. Thankfully the latter’s moisture-resistant properties are up to the mark and that at least remains liquid-less, for the time being at any rate.
Progress to Reading Services is as swift as the kit drying qualities of the mini bus’s blower, which means that there’s a five-minute time slot during which we meet a former parent from the 2000/01 season over a bacon & mushroom bap and a cup of hot, sweet tea. Caple would have been envious if only he’d realised, but he’s taking out shares in Gregg’s at the moment, so misses all the fun.
Mark Pritchard’s son, Alex, is the only GPSFA district player prior to High Definition and WC to attend Norton Primary School in the 61-year history of the association and by chance, both Mother HD and Mother WC happen to be in the services at exactly the same time. And so ensues a meeting between the only three GPS Nortonian families in the history of the world, that simultaneously sets off both a red flashing light and an incessantly beeping alarm in the Paddy Power offices at 52 Broomhill Road in Dublin, where the first-ever million-to-one odds on such a thing happening again are set in a matter of seconds of the discovery being made public.
The Photographer has replaced the New Navigator who replaced the Old Navigator on the recent Vale of White Horse expedition and a combination of the ENN’s mobile phone app and an old Garmin sat nav he found recently, lurking in a cobwebbed corner of his loft, speed us to Sindlesham, past the turning to Reddam House and off into stockbroker country a mile and something from the ground.
A local dog walker denies all knowledge of a school in the area and the man putting his bins away fifty yards further down the road takes one look as The Photographer leans out of the passenger window, before sprinting inside his house and double locks the front door, clearly fearful of becoming embroiled in some ‘Buy One, Get One Free’ scam or other.
With the mobile and Garmin sat navs now giving contradictory directions and distances, a process of Sherlock Holmes-type elimination leads us via a roundabout and the gated entry point to a prestigious-looking golf course to the secluded entrance of the rather grand surroundings of Reddam House, where the girls’ team is putting the final touches to a top quality 6-1 win over a Wokingham side that has already beaten them twice this season.
With only nine available players today, Jones slots in at right back where he continues his fine early-season midfield form, while Vye assumes the centre midfield position alongside Burgess as he did to very good effect in the final quarter of Saturday’s encounter with Portsmouth.
Meanwhile, the Gloucester supporters in a less-than-capacity crowd of twenty eight are an interesting group. There’s a lady in a black & yellow scarf and a lady in a full black & yellow combo, a university undergraduate, a rugby agent, a former Foreign Office duo going by the name of Mr & Mrs Guy Burgess and a golden labrador. Google it if you’re unsure (the name, not the dog). Both GCHQ and 52 Brownhill Road are both on instant red alert, but on this occasion for very different reasons.
Burgess and Vye, along with Myatt and Fieldhouse set the standard in midfield, winning the ball and playing neatly through the thirds and when Vye’s nineteenth minute corner is helped on by Caple, the predatory Obieri pounces from close range. 1-0. Six minutes later, Pathfinder discovers a way through the home defence and slides in Obieri with a perfectly weighted pass to right-foot the second beneath the keeper.
Wokingham apply heavy initial pressure at the onset of the second half, but Caple sets a standard that might just have been the inspiration for Ted Hughes’ most famous creation, The Iron Man, if the game had been played fifty years previously. With a wasp-free Freeman doing particularly well on the left and Jones equally so on the right, Daniels organising confidently and the midfield four trawling back as one, the storm is weathered and when Fieldhouse is upended in the box after another jinking left-wing run, Obieri and Burgess draw lots for the right to take the spot kick and the former completes his third treble in ten amazing days.
With nine minutes remaining and clearly not content with the three-in-three headlines, Obieri does his best to get the match abandoned by unleashing a rocket that, had it been two inches higher would undoubtedly have broken the goal, but instead ricochets into the top corner via the underside of the bar before anyone even considers moving. Wokingham manager Bevan breaks into a ten-second bout of genuine applause as every first floor phone in 52 Broomhill Road starts ringing at the very same time. The chances of seeing another strike of such venom before the end of the current millennium are calculated and the odds that emerge from the fifteen or so churning computers are pretty long to say the least.
It’s been a very good performance against a fine side. Fieldhouse, Freeman and Myatt have had their best and most effective games of the fledgling season to date, while Vye and Burgess have looked the part in central midfield and their desire to graft before they play has been an important factor in today’s success.
Despite his efforts to induce a pre-match heart attack amongst the coaching staff due to announcing the goalkeeper’s shirt was missing, High Definition’s performances are quite the opposite and everyone feels the same about #TopKeeper. Jones has slotted in excellently on the right side of defence as everyone knew he would, Caple has already put himself forward as a contender for entering the GPSFA Centre Back Hall of Fame and Obieri’s efforts to make the first tackle after he has scored say it all really.
The post-match spread of sandwiches and pizza is excellent news, but the flashing signs on the motorway, informing of long delays on the northbound A34, aren’t and the duo of disagreeing sat navs is called into action once again. Studying a road atlas he can’t read and listening to two devices he can’t hear, means the Even Newer Navigator is forced to involve himself in a semaphore-like sequence of left and right hand signals, each usually made about twenty metres after we’ve hared past the junction in question.
Amazingly however, we pull in at the Crocodile Farm at 3.22pm and after a desparate nine-boy rush to the reptilian powder parlour, we make the Croc Room just as the first chicken breast-with-a-tail-looking thing is held above the water on a stick of some description, enticing a float of Crocodylidae to leap vertically from the murky depths to feast on the meagre offering from above.
There’s a meerkat viewing portal that everyone wants to get their head in, a Komodo Dragon that no-one takes a liking to and a café serving ice creams with a Cadbury’s flake that everyone does. Despite Fieldhouse taking an instant dislike to the cornet and inadvertently depositing its contents on the recently wiped table top and Obieri making repeated visits to the food counter in search of even more calories, there is a four-minute lull in decibels and for 240 glorious seconds, all is well with the world….
There’s a three-mile tailback leading up to the Air Balloon and the mobile phone has died under the ongoing strain of navigating the Oxfordshire backroads, meaning no communication is possible with the assembled group of parents back at base. To a person, the gathering is utterly distraught when the bus circumnavigates the final mini roundabout and pulls into view, as they are just about to embark on a brief yet no doubt fulfilling liquid-induced sprint to the patio area of the nearby King Teddy pub.
Overcome with disappointment, the adults make a quick exit, as does WC whose bag, despite being internally dry, is now several pounds lighter due to most of his clothing still lying underneath the front seat of the mini bus. What are the odds on him leaving himself behind at some point before the end of the season? 52 Broomhill Road in Dublin is once again on high alert.
Gloucester: High Definition; Jones, Ted, Wasp; WC, Pathfinder, Vye, Fieldhouse; Obieri. Attendance: 28 (6 away + dog).
Progress to Reading Services is as swift as the kit drying qualities of the mini bus’s blower, which means that there’s a five-minute time slot during which we meet a former parent from the 2000/01 season over a bacon & mushroom bap and a cup of hot, sweet tea. Caple would have been envious if only he’d realised, but he’s taking out shares in Gregg’s at the moment, so misses all the fun.
Mark Pritchard’s son, Alex, is the only GPSFA district player prior to High Definition and WC to attend Norton Primary School in the 61-year history of the association and by chance, both Mother HD and Mother WC happen to be in the services at exactly the same time. And so ensues a meeting between the only three GPS Nortonian families in the history of the world, that simultaneously sets off both a red flashing light and an incessantly beeping alarm in the Paddy Power offices at 52 Broomhill Road in Dublin, where the first-ever million-to-one odds on such a thing happening again are set in a matter of seconds of the discovery being made public.
The Photographer has replaced the New Navigator who replaced the Old Navigator on the recent Vale of White Horse expedition and a combination of the ENN’s mobile phone app and an old Garmin sat nav he found recently, lurking in a cobwebbed corner of his loft, speed us to Sindlesham, past the turning to Reddam House and off into stockbroker country a mile and something from the ground.
A local dog walker denies all knowledge of a school in the area and the man putting his bins away fifty yards further down the road takes one look as The Photographer leans out of the passenger window, before sprinting inside his house and double locks the front door, clearly fearful of becoming embroiled in some ‘Buy One, Get One Free’ scam or other.
With the mobile and Garmin sat navs now giving contradictory directions and distances, a process of Sherlock Holmes-type elimination leads us via a roundabout and the gated entry point to a prestigious-looking golf course to the secluded entrance of the rather grand surroundings of Reddam House, where the girls’ team is putting the final touches to a top quality 6-1 win over a Wokingham side that has already beaten them twice this season.
With only nine available players today, Jones slots in at right back where he continues his fine early-season midfield form, while Vye assumes the centre midfield position alongside Burgess as he did to very good effect in the final quarter of Saturday’s encounter with Portsmouth.
Meanwhile, the Gloucester supporters in a less-than-capacity crowd of twenty eight are an interesting group. There’s a lady in a black & yellow scarf and a lady in a full black & yellow combo, a university undergraduate, a rugby agent, a former Foreign Office duo going by the name of Mr & Mrs Guy Burgess and a golden labrador. Google it if you’re unsure (the name, not the dog). Both GCHQ and 52 Brownhill Road are both on instant red alert, but on this occasion for very different reasons.
Burgess and Vye, along with Myatt and Fieldhouse set the standard in midfield, winning the ball and playing neatly through the thirds and when Vye’s nineteenth minute corner is helped on by Caple, the predatory Obieri pounces from close range. 1-0. Six minutes later, Pathfinder discovers a way through the home defence and slides in Obieri with a perfectly weighted pass to right-foot the second beneath the keeper.
Wokingham apply heavy initial pressure at the onset of the second half, but Caple sets a standard that might just have been the inspiration for Ted Hughes’ most famous creation, The Iron Man, if the game had been played fifty years previously. With a wasp-free Freeman doing particularly well on the left and Jones equally so on the right, Daniels organising confidently and the midfield four trawling back as one, the storm is weathered and when Fieldhouse is upended in the box after another jinking left-wing run, Obieri and Burgess draw lots for the right to take the spot kick and the former completes his third treble in ten amazing days.
With nine minutes remaining and clearly not content with the three-in-three headlines, Obieri does his best to get the match abandoned by unleashing a rocket that, had it been two inches higher would undoubtedly have broken the goal, but instead ricochets into the top corner via the underside of the bar before anyone even considers moving. Wokingham manager Bevan breaks into a ten-second bout of genuine applause as every first floor phone in 52 Broomhill Road starts ringing at the very same time. The chances of seeing another strike of such venom before the end of the current millennium are calculated and the odds that emerge from the fifteen or so churning computers are pretty long to say the least.
It’s been a very good performance against a fine side. Fieldhouse, Freeman and Myatt have had their best and most effective games of the fledgling season to date, while Vye and Burgess have looked the part in central midfield and their desire to graft before they play has been an important factor in today’s success.
Despite his efforts to induce a pre-match heart attack amongst the coaching staff due to announcing the goalkeeper’s shirt was missing, High Definition’s performances are quite the opposite and everyone feels the same about #TopKeeper. Jones has slotted in excellently on the right side of defence as everyone knew he would, Caple has already put himself forward as a contender for entering the GPSFA Centre Back Hall of Fame and Obieri’s efforts to make the first tackle after he has scored say it all really.
The post-match spread of sandwiches and pizza is excellent news, but the flashing signs on the motorway, informing of long delays on the northbound A34, aren’t and the duo of disagreeing sat navs is called into action once again. Studying a road atlas he can’t read and listening to two devices he can’t hear, means the Even Newer Navigator is forced to involve himself in a semaphore-like sequence of left and right hand signals, each usually made about twenty metres after we’ve hared past the junction in question.
Amazingly however, we pull in at the Crocodile Farm at 3.22pm and after a desparate nine-boy rush to the reptilian powder parlour, we make the Croc Room just as the first chicken breast-with-a-tail-looking thing is held above the water on a stick of some description, enticing a float of Crocodylidae to leap vertically from the murky depths to feast on the meagre offering from above.
There’s a meerkat viewing portal that everyone wants to get their head in, a Komodo Dragon that no-one takes a liking to and a café serving ice creams with a Cadbury’s flake that everyone does. Despite Fieldhouse taking an instant dislike to the cornet and inadvertently depositing its contents on the recently wiped table top and Obieri making repeated visits to the food counter in search of even more calories, there is a four-minute lull in decibels and for 240 glorious seconds, all is well with the world….
There’s a three-mile tailback leading up to the Air Balloon and the mobile phone has died under the ongoing strain of navigating the Oxfordshire backroads, meaning no communication is possible with the assembled group of parents back at base. To a person, the gathering is utterly distraught when the bus circumnavigates the final mini roundabout and pulls into view, as they are just about to embark on a brief yet no doubt fulfilling liquid-induced sprint to the patio area of the nearby King Teddy pub.
Overcome with disappointment, the adults make a quick exit, as does WC whose bag, despite being internally dry, is now several pounds lighter due to most of his clothing still lying underneath the front seat of the mini bus. What are the odds on him leaving himself behind at some point before the end of the season? 52 Broomhill Road in Dublin is once again on high alert.
Gloucester: High Definition; Jones, Ted, Wasp; WC, Pathfinder, Vye, Fieldhouse; Obieri. Attendance: 28 (6 away + dog).
