A Vs Erdington & Saltley

It’s happened before. Well, almost….

9th October 2004

We’re playing St Albans at home, having won each of our first three matches. Tom Warren converts Jon Blackwell’s cross to give us an early lead and despite dominating the opening period, that’s the only score of the first half. The visitors however absolutely blitz us in the third quarter, going 4-1 up and, barring two excellent saves from Luke Foran, it could be six.

However, TW makes it 4-2 with 14 minutes to go, Jamie Edge pulls it back to 4-3 and with five minutes left on the clock, Ed Jones’s cross is converted by Jake Mills at the back post. With two minutes remaining we force three consecutive corners and from the final one, Niall Wellington powers home a header from JB’s flag kick to complete a quite remarkable victory.

15th March 2007

We’re away to Bristol, the only team that can catch us at the top of the Cotswold League. Playing down the slope in the first half we gain an early advantage through the predatory Zack Kotwica, but by half time Bristol, with two huge people in their midfield ranks, are 3-1 to the good.

Nothing much happens until Bristol score their fourth midway through the second half and are only denied a fifth courtesy of a great tackle from Matt Williams. With twelve minutes to go, Kotwica pulls one back and his partner-in-crime Niall Morgan almost immediately makes it 4-3. In the last minute of normal time, Kotwica completes his hat trick and against all the odds, we are somehow level. Scenes. But all is not yet over. In the third minute of injury time and with the last kick of the game, Kotwica converts NM’s cross at the back stick before being engulfed by the entire Gloucester squad, including the two substitutes. For once, Bristol is a very happy place to be.

Saturday 31st October 2020

It’s been an interesting week. Last Saturday, we played in the West Group of the Southern Counties League Cup competition, plunging the depths in a 2-0 defeat against our Yellow team before hitting the heights in a resounding success over Bath just a few minutes later.

Monday morning saw a return to Lansdown for the first sunny day seen at the ground since July 2016, as our 2019/20 teams enjoyed a long-awaited reunion in a CL round-robin event that also featured Plymouth, Newbury, St Albans and our hard-working hosts from Bath. Wednesday was the final outing for last season’s A Squad as they contested the 7-months-delayed 19/20 Southern Counties Cup finals day, going down to Stevenage in the semi final, but beating Thurrock in the 3rd-place play-off to win their last game together. A great moment and the presentation ceremony in the stand afterwards put the seal on a really memorable day.

The fourth trip of half term sees us heading up the M5, along the M42 and up the M6 to Castle Vale Stadium, home of Midland Premier League Romulus FC, but on Saturday mornings the venue for all Birmingham District Schools’ U11 matches. The ground boasts a nice 300-seater stand, though of far more interest to Coach Wilson is the Saturday morning coffee shop which will see its profits boosted in the couple of hours that we’re billeted here.

Coach Stalley, being a quick learner following the watery decimation of his season’s first 14 warm-up sessions in the deluge that was Newbury, has skipped a few pages, photocopied ‘Preparatory Activity No 20’ and inserted the details into a clear plastic waterproof wallet (the FA Coaches’ Association refers to these, sadly, as PWWs), so he’s got his aide memoir available in case he forgets any of the minor details. Interestingly, Number 20 seems remarkably similar to the one he used before the St Albans fixture three weeks ago and we all know how that one panned out. Everyone’s two nice to mention the likeness however and the big match pre-cursers continue to move along with the minimum of fuss.

In another déjà vu moment from that game 21 days ago, Boris does his best to keep his ‘cone involvement’ to a minimum by taking an age to Velcro up his goalkeeping gloves before taking them off again to remove his tracksuit top. Last week at Bath the wind got up his pristine new black & yellow front just as The Lens was completing the pre-match team picture, with the resulting billow doing our grey-shirted custodian few photographic favours. Which is why it was used as the link image for last week’s riveting blog. Ha, ha.

Back to the present and the Man for All Seasons seems perturbed by something in the stand. ‘Are you okay?’ asks Coach Stalley. ‘It’s my dad’s headwear,’ explains MFAS. ‘Great hat,’ says the coach, momentarily diverting from the script inside his PWW. ‘Pigeons,’ replies MFAS, before ending the conversation by placing a hand on three yellow cones at once and sprinting to the blue one at the far end of the line.

The Hurricane is wearing his new GPSFA snood inside his match shirt in a clear and obvious attempt to induce the ire of Coach Wilson, but the ruse falls on stony ground as the allure of a third latte in twenty six minutes proves considerably more enticing than a caustic comment or two about modern-day fashion accessories and the people who indulge in them.

HB makes a show of removing his tracksuit bottoms by getting his gruesome yellow boots caught in the legs and insisting it’s easier to squeeze the tracksuit over his boots rather than remove the boots and slide the tracksuit over his socks. Five minutes later he’s sitting miserably in the dugout having discovered he’s sub for the first twenty minutes and wishing he hadn’t bothered removing anything at all.

‘I love the rain,’ muses Monty Don, staring skywards, a rare smile emanating from the damp corners of his slightly open mouth. It’s a comment that’s met with a team silence that replies, in somewhat mystified tones, ‘You must be joking, MD.’ ‘Herbaceous borders,’ mutters The Gardener, in reply to the surrounding tranquility. ‘It does wonders for my herbaceous borders.’

As it turns out, it doesn’t do wonders for our performance. After negotiating the first 93 seconds with only a couple of alarms, some dodgy defending presents the hosts with the easiest of opportunities to take the lead and we’re up against it from the off. On eleven minutes Monty Don pulls an effort wide of the far post on one of our rare forays forward and within a minute there’s more hesitation in the visitors’ ranks and a very nicely taken goal makes it 2-0. Erdington grab a third before the first of two breaks in this 3 x 20-minute encounter and the away dugout’s a miserable place, despite the presence of everyone’s favourite chocolate fingers, which are currently retailing at £1.50 a box in the biscuit section of Innsworth Tesco.

TD makes a late re-entry at the start of the second period as there’s a knot in one of his nice black boots that takes an age to untie, so he has an extra five minutes rest with only a container full of chocolate bourbons for company. Eight minutes into the second period, an unmarked Erdington-ian converts a right wing corner to make it 4-0 and it’s soon five following a big deflection off a Gloucester defender which sees the ball roll agonisingly into the far corner.

This fifth setback oddly sees a bit of a step-up in our energy levels and a couple of minutes before the second break, Masonic finds himself one-on-one with the keeper and his third goal of the campaign marginally reduces the arrears.

The second break is more positive then the first, having lost the last period 1-2 after the 0-3 reversal of the initial twenty. We’ve been more competitive in the last ten minutes and got a goal – now can we win the final third?

The Black & Yellows make a decent start to their challenge. No-Name Steadman presses well and the ball breaks to Masonic who grabs his second goal of the game. Shortly afterwards, No-Name drives powerfully into the top corner and suddenly it’s back to 5-3. There’s the first semblance of noise emanating from the away seats and after a bit of to-ing and fro-ing the noise level goes up a few more decibels when, with seven minutes remaining, Monty Don pounces on Masonic’s through ball to reduce the deficit to one. Remarkably, with four minutes still to go, The Gardener plants the leveller, following another Freemason pass, into the bottom corner and the arrow on the decibel counter ratchets up another notch. Don goes close to a hat trick when his dinked effort beats the keeper, only to be very well cleared off the line by a retreating defender. Smiffy then drives just wide of the left-hand post with his standing foot and there is a succession of very late corners, Captain Cooper going closest to grabbing the unlikeliest of winners following the third flag kick of four.

And that’s how it ends – statistically, the biggest, weather-wise the wettest and game-wise the most unlikely comeback in GPSFA history. Coach Wilson isn’t sure, though. Ten minutes or so before the final whistle, he was turfed off the 3G (if that’s not a contradiction in terms) by a rather over-zealous Stadium Manager who informed him that trainers weren’t allowed on the surface and he’d have to stand on the side, a conversation which means he missed No-Name’s fine strike and thinks we’ve lost 5-4.

The Gloucester dugout is, at long last though, a pretty happy place. The rain has finally relented and the sun is threatening to shine on the righteous. The Grocer has produced a personal pack of Jaffas which he proceeds to scoff in between repeating the same five words over and over in between a succession of blond-haired nods. ‘Two.’ Nod. ‘Goals.’ Nod. ‘And.’ Nod. ‘Two.’ Nod ‘Assists.’ Nod. Smile. Nod. ‘Two.’ Nod. ‘Goals….’ You get the drift.

Big Phil, The Erdington manager, had to leave the stadium midway through the second period as he was taking his little lad Pumpkin-Picking. It was 5-0 at the time. He’d enjoyed a fair number of treats during the thirty-odd minutes he’d watched, but was blissfully unaware of the tricks that were to come as he filled his spacious farm trolley with several big orange footballs. It’s been a scary day in some respects, but ultimately a quite remarkable one.

‘Ghouls,’ says Cooper. ‘Witches,’ says Hurricane. ‘Pumpkins,’ says Big Phil. ‘Pigeons,’ says MFAS. The Grocer nods. ‘Hallowe’en,’ says everyone.

Gloucester: Boris; Hurricane, Captain Cooper, Black Boots; Two-Foot, Man for All Seasons, No-Name, Monty Don; Freemason; Smiler.