Wycombe – 26.09.20

Saturday 19th September

It’s a bumpy old track, but we rack up at Elton Leisure in pretty good time, ready for the introductory speech from the pair of enthusiastic battleground marshals, with only Monty Don missing the opening (verbal) salvo due to his spending a bit too long rummaging in his back garden’s rather impressive herbaceous borders. Two hours of laser gun combat in the mid-September sunshine eventually sees the A Team come back from a set down to edge home by the odd conquest in five, but you get the feeling no-one’s that bothered about the result – it’s the killing that counts. Coach Harris has guested for the red bibs and provided an ample target at which the opposition could aim, so how the blue bibs finish up losing, albeit by just the one, is anyone’s guess. Gauging the result in the battle-side café is considerably easier though – Coach Wilson’s latte-count is noticeably greater than everyone else’s coffee tally put together and the proprietor goes home clutching a big bag of cash and wearing a smile that suggests things have gone considerably better than she initially thought they might.

Lunchtime arrives and tastes vary. Sensible Sam Jones does Hillview proud by bringing (and sticking to) a nutritious Tupperware offering, though Boris (Becker) does little for Hardwicke’s reputation by consuming a giant hot dog and chips, but not in the double-quick time that would give this sentence a proper literary ending. Cooper and Steadman are clearly of the meat and three veg persuasion as they forego burgers of all descriptions and plump for bacon butties with no ketchup instead. Real men and aspiring lumberjacks both.

The afternoon’s Adventure Golf is won hands down by the Hillview Hurricane, who negotiates the 12-hole course in a little over thirty, which is impressive stuff indeed. The Eagle takes a while to get going, eleven holes in fact, but though he finishes strongly on the final fairway, he’s last by a bit in our group. In the next melee back, Captain Cooper opens with a hole-in-one, but finishes up about thirty over par, which suggests he has a worrying lack of staying power. Across the water, Liggett creates a new course record, taking 273 putts to reach the tenth green before Coach Wixey decides to stop counting and talk to the other players instead.

As we head back along the A48, news filters through that Gloucester City have succumbed to a 1-0 pre-season defeat to an Oxford City side that rarely uproots any trees, though the manager says pre-season results don’t matter, so no-one gets too uppity. He said the same after they lost 2-1 at Barwell, wherever that is, in midweek, but again it’s only pre-season, so everything at the ranch is absolutely fine.

Sunday 20th September

We decamp to Swindon Village for a warm-up game against Cheltenham on another beautiful sunny morning, only to find ourselves 5-1 down after the first quarter, Smiffy touching home our only riposte after Monty Don’s piledriver comes back off the crossbar.

The second quarter is much better, two crunching tackles from Dixy paving the way for a far more competitive twenty minutes in which Don grabs our goal, while neat finishes from Lidl and Steadman ensure parity in the final two sessions. A concave curve of improvement for any statisticians out there, meaning Sunday afternoon is spent in quiet, but contented contemplation of the weekend’s interesting events.

Saturday 26th September

Six days of Covid protocol-preparation later, Wycombe are the visitors to GL2 for the opening day of the new season proper. The pitch looks a picture, justifying the sizeable four-figure sum invested in it over the summer, while no-one notices the new pavilion roof, the result of twelve months’ planning and fund raising that have ultimately resulted in a new five-year lease on GPSFA HQ being signed, sealed and eventually delivered. At the entry table, programmes are selling like hot cakes, particularly to the Eagle and Clarke families, whose offspring adorn the publication’s front cover on Matchday One. The rest of the team meanwhile look on in a state of suspended apprehension, realising that, in regard to cover pictures at least, it’s all downhill from here.

The Chef, mortified that his deep-fat fryers are being forced into temporary redundancy, busies himself providing copious amounts of paper towels for visitors to wipe the Carex from their digits, Amazon Prime having missed its Friday afternoon deadline for delivering the much-easier-to-get-rid-of packs of sanitizer. At least everyone smells nice.

Dixy does his school and family proud by turning up resplendent in a pair of traditional black boots, while the other nine don’t. Now sporting the title of Top Golfer, Hurricane takes up a place in the middle of the front row for the socially-distanced team photograph, meaning Captain Cooper is banished to the recesses of the middle tier, though he affords himself a wry smile when Jones’s insubordination wins the perpetrator a place on the bright blue substitutes’ bench for the opening third of the game.

Gloucester edge the first half in terms of both possession and territory and a fine move involving Barnard, Steadman, Don and Lidl ends up with Smiffy sidefooting home his now trademark two-yard finish. ‘1.8288 metres,’ he swiftly calculates during his jog back to the halfway line, where Captain Cooper gives him a double hand-slap, one for the goal and one for the calculation.

Don blasts over following a Lidl cross before Wycombe level two minutes prior to the break, the city backline failing to close down Stenning who rifles an effort into the bottom right corner.

The visitors, buoyed by their goal begin to assert themselves as the second period gets underway and Boris is forced into two excellent saves to keep the scores level. At the other end, the Bucks’ keeper makes a sprawling stop from Lidl, before the best move of the match is finished off by Don, only for the striker to find he’s strayed a yard offside. ‘0.9144 metres,’ mumbles Smiffy, who’s currently taking a well merited ten-minute bench break to maintain his impressive mental capacity.

Two minutes later however, Wycombe take the lead with a great 20-yard strike from Sutherland that arrows into the top corner, giving Boris no chance whatsoever. ‘Eighteen point….,’ starts Smiffy, but decides against the decimal places when he sees the pained expression on the nearby Gloucester adults’ faces.

With the home side pushing forward in an attempt to find an equaliser, Sandiford breaks clear to make it 3-1 and fine finishes from Sutherland and Kirby in the dying minutes give the final score line a somewhat lopsided look. Wycombe though took their chances excellently when they came and with what looks like a very strong central spine (CB, CM & CF), they seem set for a productive season.

Glum players’ faces however don’t stay glum for long as Hurricane unearths a Twirl in the recesses of his brown paper bag and, spurred on by this discovery, others begin a frantic search of their jiffies to see what calorific delights reside within.

It’s mid-afternoon and having treated The Photographer to ham, egg & chips in a neighbouring eatery, twitter reveals it’s all smiles at the New Meadow Park as Gloucester City lead a Hungerford Town side who’re unlikely to pull up any trees this season, 3-0 at half time. The last ten minutes however see the visitors score three times in a goal-rush reminiscent of this morning’s happenings at the New GL2, prompting another philosophical revelation from El Supremo. ‘Fine lines,’ says the GCFC manager, ‘and don’t forget, results don’t matter ‘cos it’s still pre-season.’

‘Fine lines and decimal places,’ says Smiffy, quietly. And it’s good to know, that despite the day’s somewhat disappointing score lines, at least one of them is almost certain to be proved right.

Gloucester: Boris; Eagle, Cooper, Dixy; Smiffy, Barnard, Steadman, Don; Lidl; Hurricane.