Tuesday

Some stats about the 2023 girls’ tour of Wales for you. It’s the tenth GPSFA girls’ tour overall and the third to Wales. Of those ten tours, Coach, Maybelline and the Cockerel have been on five of them. That means 50% of those tours have been attended by our three long-serving/suffering number 1, 10 and 11. That also means Coach Ed has had to give up fifteen days of his life looking after the Cockerel. 3% of the past eighteen months have been directly in her company. He’s expecting a telegram from the King to thank him for his service.

There’s also a pleasant bit of symmetry with these five tours where their first and last have been to Wales, their second and fourth have been to London, with Kent this time last year stuck in the middle. To commemorate the occasion, the Cockerel rushes to the minibus to present Coach Ed with a fetching GPSFA 23 tour hoodie. There’s an awkward moment where it appears that Coach Katie may not receive one but there’s an even more awkward moment when Coach Katie remarks “it’s cool they put your name (ED) on the hoodie rather than your initials (ED).” An observation so lacking in common sense that it’s likely to trigger an OFSTED inspection at Robinswood Primary Academy after Easter.

Father Neverlate is in buoyant mood having arrived five minutes early for the first time in his life. The traditional Mexican standoff of the Neverlate family blaming their tardiness on each other ensues with Mother being the final person to be blamed today, most likely because she’s not there to clip them round the ears on this occasion. Florence is the only late arrival but she’s forgiven instantly by unveiling a box full of Easter eggs for the girls to enjoy on Easter Sunday, or more likely, in their hotel rooms at 9pm tonight, after brushing their teeth.

Sadly, we’re without Nieve, Rachel and Evie who are a mixture of on holiday or incapacitated. Coach is also still injured after escaping from her hamster ball and hurting her wrist but is so keen to preserve her status as Eating Legend that she still wants to come anyway. We’ve managed to recruit Amelie who’s bravely offered to join us instead of her parents on

condition that she doesn’t have to share a room with her sister, which is a fair deal to ensure we have some fresh legs for our matches.

Our first match is played at the Ocean Park arena against two Cardiff sides. The first match is dire. And judging by the deafening silence of the away support, they agree with that assessment too. The second match isn’t much better with the highlights being Coach almost scoring her first ever goal but being denied in a one-one one encounter and the Easter bunny almost grabbing his first GPSFA goal from a curling shot just over the top corner from what would be outside of the penalty area. We’re also treated to two competent goalkeeping displays from the Back-Up, Eloise and the back up to the Back-Up, Mizrobel who have valiantly offered to stand in for the currently injured Coach. A 0-1 and 0-3 loss has put the long standing record of Gloucester Girls never losing all of their tour matches in jeopardy.

The next job is a race to beat Wokingham to the hotel which is remarkably won by Gloucester even though we’re in a minibus whereas their opponents have travelled in two cars. The rooms are allocated as such; 232 houses The Back-Up and the Easter Bunny, 231 contains Mizrobel and Amelie, 230 is inhabited by Neverlate and Jezmon, 228 will host Coach and Ida and The Cockerel and Maybelline will reside in 227. The final one is a final test of a pair that roomed on their first Wales tour and scored a perfect zero on their first room inspection after only being in there for thirty minutes that day. Can this tour serve as a redemption arc to see how much they’ve learned over the previous four GPSFA tours?

The girls are given ten minutes to get ready to go downstairs to write diaries and have dinner. There’s an initial panic as to a lack of wardrobe space to put bags but Room Queen Maybelline shares her solution of tucking them away under the shelf under the window. The girls start to write their diaries under Coach Katie’s watchful eye with Domino’s pizza used as a dangling carrot make them write faster. Discussion revolves around what words are real, how are such words spelled and what constitutes a detail interesting enough to include in a match report.

Thirty minutes into writing time, Coach Ed realises that none of the six pizzas are gluten free for Jezmon, and has to order a new one or risk the wrath of an Eating Legend. The Cockerel states that she’s tried gluestick free pizza at Jezmon’s house and can vouch that it’s very tasty.

We all agree that we enjoy gluestick free pizza so can’t really see her point. Jezmon’s good value for her own pizza and demolishes it all without breaking sweat to admiration from her team-mates. A jealous Coach, herself an Eating Legend in her own right, pushes herself to the limit to eat seven slices of Margherita and is exasperated by the lack of recognition from her peers in comparison. All eating points stay intact as some of the girls force down pizza crusts for the first time in their lives and they all err on the side of caution with regards to eating one last slice, just in case it’s unable to be finished and will then cost them an eating point.

Room inspections, and bear in mind they only had ten minutes in their room, are a sorry state of affairs. 227 score a perfect ten, thanks surely to the Room Queen. 228 have left their lights on to score 9. 230 have left their light on and toilet seat up to score 8. 232 have left their chair out in the open to score 9. While 231, with the handicap of having Amelie on her first tour and sharing with the worst room scorer in history, Mizrobel score a mizzerable 6.

There’s some commotion as we leave our dinner table behind as Ida whispers gleefully to the group with Coach shooshing her in distress. It turns out that Coach has left her toothbrush at home and, in such a panic to not lose an attitude point, asked Ida to keep it quiet, which was obviously never going to happen. Coach’s solution of chewing gum throughout the next three days would likely cause everyone to give her a wide berth so Coach Ed takes pity on her and asks the front desk for a spare. She’s even spared losing an attitude point.

The girls are sent to bed at 9pm but the excitement levels are too high to sleep much before 11pm. The levels are so high that 227 has decided to play with their football at 10.15pm. Sadly for them Coach Ed is reading his book outside of their door so confiscates it from a bashful looking pair of roommates and will deduct an attitude point off of each of them tomorrow evening.

Wednesday

230 is the only room that’s barely awake when the doors are knocked as the inhabitants answer in their pyjamas with the lights still off. The rest bounce to their door full of questions. Breakfast is a buffet affair and croissants are the most popular choice along with a newly

sophisticated appreciation of hot drinks, which even Coach Katie joins them in. The girls are quiet since Wokingham are in the room with us and they spend most of their meal gawking at them in silence. They jealously watch them leave halves of sausages, mouthfuls of toast and ends of croissants knowing full well that they don’t have to worry about dropping eating points. Worst of all is having to watch them go to the toilet without dropping attitude points either.

We make our way to the Mumbles to see one of Swansea’s most famous beaches even though the rain tells us we probably shouldn’t bother. When we arrive and the tide is in and we realise we definitely shouldn’t have bothered. Mizrobel disagrees, this mizzerable weather is just how she likes it. The girls have brought their mini footballs to try and play beach football on the last remaining bit of sand that the sea hasn’t touched this morning. Maybelline helpfully drags her foot along the sand to draw out a pitch that looks more like a Formula One racetrack whilst Neverlate carries the largest pebbles she can to make some goalposts. All players forego their footwear and Jezmon makes the most of her attacking freedom by scoring an ever increasing number of goals every time you ask her throughout the day.

The Adcocks are on an adventure of their own with Coach Katie searching for crabs under the rocks with great success. They also come across some rather ugly looking fish which we later find out to be monkfish (thanks to Father Easter Bunny) that are stranded within the rock formations. The GPSFA animal rescue service manages to save three of the nightmarish creatures by making them bite onto a rock and then lobbing them out into the tide.

As the temperature drops and the rain increases, we make our way to the arcade where the girls ensure their parents’ money is put to good use, all in the name of swapping £10 notes for penny sweets via sought after yellow tickets. A quick stop in the café next door for lunch is another test of the girls eating points as full plates of chicken nuggets and chips are scoffed down. The Eating Legends do battle side by side and the only eating points in danger of being dropped are from Coach Katie who made the mistake of ordering a scampi and chips four hours after a full English. Attitude points also remain intact for the day as Ida courageously holds onto her bladder until everyone, including (Slow) Coach Katie, has finished eating.

The next activity is the LC where the girls can enjoy swimming, slides, a lazy river and a wave machine for two hours and the coaches can enjoy peace and quiet in the gallery. Regular checks through the window find most of the team out of sight although the Adcocks appear to have commandeered the toddler slide right in front of us as they repeatedly barge three-year-olds out of the way for their next go.

Dinner is at the Harvester although it takes us a while to find it as it shows up inside Morrisons on Google Maps. The groups are split into two tables to try and mix the girls up but we still can’t separate the Adcocks this way. The Cockerel has a nightmare and starts off by ordering pasta from the under 5’s menu. She rectifies this by ordering pasta and meatballs from the slightly older menu but her face tells us this is a mistake too when she tells us “These meatballs taste weird.” Eating points are at risk when she’s told they’re veggie meatballs but she performs heroics to finish them all, even requesting a round of applause at the end of her efforts. The slow service at Harvester means Coach Katie has to be creative to keep the children entertained and starts a game about her party and who can come too depending on what they will bring. Mizrobel turns out to be rather good at code cracking- Father and Mother Mizrobel will be proud to know- and comes up with her own code that’s so good that the Coaches do their best to ignore the game to avoid being shown up.

Coach Katie delivers diary feedback and notes a significant drop off in quality in the second half of their diary entries which would appear to coincide with the arrival of the pizzas last night. Neverlate is lambasted for misspelling went as ‘whent’ for the second tour in a row, the group clearly can’t tell the difference between ‘off’ and ‘of’ and when each should be used but in better news, Gloucester is spelled correctly throughout. The girls excitedly finish just one page of their diary in a record time of half an hour where most of the stories revolve around ugly fish and nearly drowning at the LC.

Room scores show perfect tens from rooms 232 and 227. Room 231 manage Mizrobel’s best ever score of 8 with 230 achieving the same score, each having the same issue of having rubbish on the floor and the telephones not being parallel and perpendicular to the headboard. Room 228 score the same after leaving the bathroom light on and bathroom door open all day. Ida’s not having this however. She claims that the neither of these are her fault,

it was the cleaner who is responsible for this. Such cruel fate that she of all people should suffer at the hands of forgetful Holiday Inn cleaners in both Hemel Hempstead AND Neath. Almost like it’s a vendetta or corporate conspiracy against only her. Or that she can’t remember to turn a light off.

Thursday

Doors are knocked at 8am and the only pair caught in bed are 227 who complain that they weren’t even given time to answer the door. Nor wake up or get out of bed by the looks of it either. Black kit is the clothing request and the first attitude point of the day is dropped by Coach who reveals that she hasn’t packed hers and no amount of chewing gum will change that. The second attitude point is dropped by Neverlate for coming down to breakfast without her socks on.

Final room inspections reveal 227 have kept a perfect score of 30 out of 30, mostly thanks to Room Queen Maybelline and her incredibly high standards of tidiness. 228 have also managed to keep a perfect score thanks to that pesky cleaner being kept out of their room overnight. The others have scored 9s which is a miraculous improvement for Mizrobel although it must be due to Amelie grafting all morning and cleaning up after her.

Breakfast keeps all eating points at 10 out of 10 again. The main topic of conversation revolves around whether baked beans are covered in bean sauce or tomato sauce, and no amount of persuading from the adults will change the girls’ minds. The root of the problem seems to be that the sauce on baked beans doesn’t look like tomato ketchup so the adults must be wrong.

After check out, we have an actual five minute journey, much to the team’s surprise, to Neath Sports Centre where our final match against Swansea will be held. After Tuesday’s lacklustre display, the girls are challenged to maintain the GPSFA girls’ record of a positive result on every tour with a mixture of hard work, determination and using the inside of their foot to control the ball.

The first match starts at a frenetic pace with Gloucester searching for a route to goal. Ida is making some headway over on the left, Coach and The Cockerel are combining well up front and Neverlate is in a constant state of movement to keep the ball in our possession. Jezmon and Maybelline are repelling almost everything down the middle with excellent use of the inside of their foot. In goal, Mizrobel compounds Swansea’s mizzery with some fine saves that would give any unknowing observer the idea that she’s an experienced goalkeeper. Just before the break, Ida wrestles free of her marker and makes her run towards the penalty area, a quick lift of her head spots some team-mates in space in front of goal and a whipped cross bounces pleasantly for The Back-Up to assuredly sidefoot Gloucester into a well-deserved lead.

The second half is even and the back-up to the Back-Up is called into action some more and continues to make some more fantastic saves. Her distribution is also excellent and launches plenty of Gloucester attacks. Ida and The Cockerel are keen to extend the lead, so much so that they seem to have forgotten our agreement of tracking back and keeping the team shape. Fortunately, Neverlate is playing out of her skin and has them both covered. There’s relief at the final whistle as the famous tour streak continues.

The Back-Up retires from goalscoring duties and replaces the back-up to the Back-Up in goal for the second game. This Swansea side appear tougher and cause us some extra problems compared to the first match. The Easter Bunny and Jezmon show some steel in defence and make good regular use of the inside of their feet to keep the ball away from goal. Chances are few and far between as this Swansea defence are harder to break through, and even harder when no-one is running to support Coach with her hold-up play.

The half-time break allows us to fully appreciate Neverlate’s efforts during the match. She’s been tenacious in the tackle, subtle with the ball as she plays it off soon after retrieving it and has shown incredible foresight when breaking down Swansea attacks with her emergency defending. Coach Katie acutely observes that she’s showing the ‘grit’ in the ‘talent, hard work and grit’ graph seen in the girls’ diaries. Thankfully she’s still not tired so she’ll play the final half too.

When we think there’s no more she can do, Neverlate follows up a goalkeeping spill to drill the ball into the goal to give us the lead. A goal that ensures she’ll achieve a 9.5 match rating after today’s game. We even have chances to make it two. The Easter Bunny, in an unfamiliar striker role, is displaying some superb hold-up play to bring others into the game and a shot from The Cockerel is palmed out through an onrushing Mizrobel’s legs before being driven agonisingly past the post by Amelie.

In quick succession, Gloucester’s determination to get a second goal is exposed as Swansea cross the ball from their right and both goals are scored almost identically at the back post as runners are lost in the headiness of being 1-0 up. Although we’re proud of our efforts, Gloucester show great spirit to get back into the game and we’re rewarded near the end. Neverlate intercepts a goal kick before laying it off to Mizrobel who piles on the mizzery for Swansea with a well taken finish at the near post to equalise.

The final whistle brings to an end another fantastic tour for the GPSFA Girls. Let’s be honest, a tour that got better as it went on. We had three seasons of weather in three days. Two very different matches but the most important thing is, we all have one amazing memory for the rest of our lives.

Diary

1st Maybelline, Coach and The Cockerel

Room

1st Room 227

Eating

1st Everybody

Attitude

1st The Easter Bunny, Mizrobel, The Back-Up, Amelie

Match

1st Neverlate

Overall

1st Maybelline

2nd The Cockerel (!)

3rd The Easter Bunny