Well, that’s just about it, then. The Final Curtain has descended on the 2020/21 season, almost exactly ten months after it began at the beginning of September and thirteen months after the first trial day during May half term. Here we take a quick look back at what happened.

Okay, let’s start with the stats.

Pre-lockdown: P11 W4 D2 L5; success rate: 45%.

Post-lockdown: P20 W11 D4 L5; success rate: 65%.

Overall: P31 W15 D6 L10; success rate: 58%.

Notes: (1) Success rate: Win = 2pts; draw = 1 pt. Why? Who knows; it’s something we’ve always done.

(2) For clarity, ‘hub’ (tournament) events count as one cap, but games, being 9-a-side, count separately. Why? Who knows; it’s something we’ve always done.

(3) Whichever way you look at it, results-wise, the improvement and progress over the course of the season has been very good. Well done all.

Competition-wise – Southern Counties League: 2nd out of 12 teams; Southern Counties Cup: 2nd out of 16 teams; Southern Counties League Cup: 5th= out of 20 teams. We’ll settle for that, but in all fairness, most of the players didn’t know the status of most of the games they played. When you’re eleven, it doesn’t make any difference if it’s a competition fixture or a non-competition fixture, you don’t try any harder or any less hard, and nor should you. We won a league once and half the players didn’t even know we played in one.

As mentioned more than once in this season’s weekly reviews, the most important thing for any person to have, whatever their age, is the drive to be the absolute best they can be in everything they do. As such, game status doesn’t matter. Not yet, anyway.

CAFÉ – Control your Attitude, Focus & Effort. Well, there’s never been any question about the effort this season. Whether we played well, played averagely or played poorly, the effort, individually and collectively, has never been in doubt. And nor should it be. Ever.

Focus – concentration’s too simple a word. The difference between concentrating and focussing is the same as the difference between listening and hearing, or between an everyday Madras and a fiery Vindaloo (kids – you’ll discover this soon enough. For now, enjoy life). It’s big. The improvement in focus has been one of two main reasons why the pre- and post-lockdown success rates are so different.

Attitude – how do you react when things get hard or when things go wrong? It’s probably fair to say that in two of the first three games (1-5 v Wycombe and 1-5 v St Albans; wow, those memories still send a shiver down the vertebrae), the reaction to adversity wasn’t great. Compare that to the two games against Wolverhampton, an excellent side by anyone’s standards, and again the improvement has been terrific. Attitude, by its very nature, will always be a work in progress, so individually, keep working at it. Try to assess how positively you react to disappointment – not just at football, but in all that you do – and if you think you do it pretty well, think how you might do it even better. The improved attitude, in the face of adversity, is the second big reason for the improvement.

The stats are what you get out of the games; CAFÉ is what you put in. You can only control what you put into life, so it has to be more important.

Right, here’s some adult stuff:

Magnanimity. Now there’s a good word. Rudyard Kipling in ‘If’, arguably the greatest poem ever written (apart from ‘I’m Just a Boy’; 2021, of course), argues: ‘If you can meet with both triumph and disaster, And treat those two imposters just the same, You’ll be a man, my son.’ This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t care whether you win or lose – of course you should. If you are lucky enough to spend a lifetime involved in sport in some way or other, you’ll discover that winning never gets any worse and losing doesn’t get too much better. But how you react to each is important. Without being critical, after their league and cup victories, both Luton and Wolves celebrated very loudly right next to our team, who didn’t react in any sort of negative way; well, not outwardly, anyway. Individually and collectively, they were/are a remarkably magnanimous group. Don’t get too high (when things go well); don’t get too low (when they don’t) is a pretty decent recipe for a successful and fulfilling life.

Being Nice. Genuinely nice people are popular and this group, individually and collectively, are very nice. Well mannered, respectful, thoughtful and a pleasure to be with. Even Miserable Monty Don. 

Glass Half-Full; Glass Half-Empty. For reasons beyond everyone’s control, there are lots of things we haven’t done this season that in another time we might have. But, given the situation, we’ve done far, far more than many people thought we might. Do you think most about what we didn’t do or does what we did do dominate? My glass is almost completely full. I nearly missed out on having three great months with a fab group of people. But I didn’t and I’ve loved every minute apart from missing the Newbury game. And Man for All Season’s boots.

Independence. Kids are far more independent, generally, than adults give them credit for. To develop independence further, they have to be given the opportunity to be so. Let them solve as many of their own problems as possible, let them do their own thing (within reason) and let them make decisions (even though you may need to phrase questions carefully – non-independent and confidence-lacking children tend to default to a shake of the head, or ‘No’). The biggest blocker of child independence is adults. Always. Saying less is often saying more and doing less is usually doing more. You get the drift.

Confidence. Kids who are always told what to do generally lack confidence. Kids who are encouraged to discuss things (however trivial – sometimes, the more trivial the better [easier, less threatening and no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answers], give their opinions and say what they think without necessarily being corrected become freer thinkers and more confident in themselves. They’re not scared of making mistakes, doing or saying the ‘wrong’ thing, or being criticised. They feel like they belong, and when you feel like you belong, by and large you’re confident.

Back to kids’ stuff – Records Set:

Exactly 50% of the squad went to the same school and none of them had to isolate. That’s the other reason we did well.

There were four Harry’s/Harrison’s and a Monty/Jonty in the ten-boy squad.

Man for All Seasons played in eight out of nine positions by the end of the tenth game, but played in the same position for the next twenty-one.

Even though they improved at the same rate as the team’s victory column, Cooperman and The Don were, over the course of the season, clear winners of the ‘Last to Arrive’ award.

Triple B, BB Dix and Rhodes wore traditional black boots both pre- and post-lockdown and as such were the most popular players with the coaches. The others didn’t – and weren’t.

Bruce The Chef picked me up at 6.50 on Saturday morning, drove the bus to Woking, bought the coffee and bacon rolls at Reading services, ran the line in all four games, said ‘Nice to see you, to see you nice,’ to everyone he met, drove the bus home, cleaned it out, then went straight off to his care home to do the night shift. The man’s a machine and epitomises everything that’s great about GPSFA.

After visiting Tuffley Tom at eight in the morning, Freemason had the best hair style for a total of 47 minutes back in early May; Marvin had the most perfectly manicured hair every day of the season – ‘A follicular delight’, as someone described it – and Rhodes – well, Rhodes didn’t have any hair at all.

Samuel Jones is a thespian of some repute, though no-one knew for almost ten whole months – until now. Alice in Wonderland was actually conceived in a house in Charlton Kings (fact), and Lewis Carroll would be very proud if he could see the 2021 incarnation of the Queen of Hearts.

Smiffy can tell you the exact number of petals on each of Miserable Monty Don’s patriotically red, white & blue hydrangaes without actually looking at the plants themselves. Absolutely amazing.

Thanks for the memories. Carpe Diem.

Gloucester ‘A’ Squad 2020/21: Marvin; Queen of Hearts, MfAS, Black Boots Dix; Freemason, Coops, Rhodes, Two-Foot, Triple B; MMD.