New Year
Boxing Day 2018. Is this when the revival starts? Coach Harris and The Lens have come in the car to Weston-(super)-Mare, a name that was surely designed by someone looking for a definition of ‘exaggeration’. People and dogs and more people and more dogs wander aimlessly along the front, the food takes fifty five minutes to arrive and The Photographer refuses a placatory drink from the very pleasant barmaid because he thinks he’s got to pay. Draw 0-0 against the bottom team. One shot, no goals, no revival.
Friday 28th-Sunday 30th December 2018. The Real Manager and dog are separately coerced into spending a weekend in the English ‘Riviera’ (see ‘exaggeration’), a three-day break which just happens to feature the Torquay United v GCFC game slap bang in the middle of it. The catering outlet behind the away end of the very impressive Plainmoor stadium, in which the ‘fried’ onions are extracted from a steaming vat with a highly questionable hygiene rating, is just about recognisable amongst the fly tipping detritus from the surrounding neighbourhood; a fitting location then for the 58 hungry but desperate souls who’ve made the 120-mile trip to south Devon to witness a 2-1 defeat. No revival, one goal and a tiny smidgen of hope.
New Year’s Day 2019. Coach Harris and The Lens are again in the car, heading for the Hartwell & Spiers on this occasion and the second leg of the Weston SM festive double / debacle (delete as appropriate). All are looking forward no doubt to some new year fireworks and the start of a winning run. Neither happen. Lose 3-1. No revival - and no fried onions either.
Wednesday 2nd January 2019. The GCFC forum’s been in overdrive ever since the manager’s morning proclamation that he can ‘turn it around’ and there’s a ‘plan in place’. Neither has been evident for the past fourteen (winless) games, so the signs aren’t altogether great.
Thursday 3rd January 2019. Twenty four hours after announcing ‘the plan’, the manager’s tended his resignation; his parting statement is synonymous with his reign and contains one grammatical error for every winless game under his tenure (plus two extras for luck). Happy New Year everyone! The Groundsman celebrates by painting the changing rooms black & yellow, but any ideas of a celebratory painting of the town red in the company of The Photographer are dashed due to the Big Red Machine having been out of action for the past ten days, meaning a state of austerity has descended on Abbotswood Road and all who live in it.
Friday 4th January 2019. After thirteen days in the footballing wilderness that is Gloucester City AFC, things are looking up as the real players return to an OSP that any self-respecting, mitten-wearing polar explorer would admit feels remarkably like home. Lettuce, modelling a brand new bright blue bobble hat and High Definition who isn’t, are first to arrive, thus continuing their old-year resolution that a high level of punctuality is good for the soul. Obieri has neither a new hat nor a working clock, so continues his old-year resolution also.
‘Lost’ warm-up tops are returned to Caple & Obieri for the first time this season and to Jones for the twelfth, before the same three amigos spend the next fifty five minutes standing in a line waiting for Burgess to drop in a corner or two.
Saturday 5th January 2019. Wasp and WC are both away on post-Xmas breaks; the former at a five-star French Alpine skiing resort in Nid de Guepe, the latter on a fortnight’s monastic retreat in Prinknash – fourteen uninterrupted days focusing on ‘Meditation & Memory’ (according to the front-page ad in last month’s ‘Local Answer’). The Groundsman’s also away after Thursday’s black & yellow exertions, recovering in Emergency Ward Ten at GRH; visiting times are 3.30-6.30pm and you can park for a fiver if you want to pop in for an anatomical discourse at any point.
The Yellows begin the day’s proceedings with an excellent display versus their St Albans counterparts, netting seven without reply to appropriately notch up their seventh consecutive victory against the league leaders. Coach Stalley, under the watchful, all-seeing eye of Father ‘Assessor’ Jones, swaps the yellow linesman’s flag for his pristine new black & gold Christmas-present logbook and runs the team through FA warm-up routine number 54, which (again) seems to involve people constantly skipping clockwise in a cone-created circle as if on some Springtime maypole celebration, despite the morning’s temperature at no point ever threatening to reach even a measly Diana Ross. Mother Brown, as you would expect, takes an instant shine to the prospect of an all-inclusive knees-up; HD, as you would expect, is summarily unimpressed and decides to watch the girls’ game instead.
There had been two major areas of pre-match concern. Firstly, the absence of Myatt means a change of tactics is required – someone else will need to carry the drinks - and secondly that Obieri’s gleaming new white boots might take the gloss off his performance due to him not wanting to compromise their eerily reflective scientific properties. Any anxiety though is quickly dissipated; Lettuce and Caple collect the bottles, before Burgess’s fine pass and Obieri’s excellent finish put us a goal to the good with just eight minutes on the timer. A quick rest on the advertising hoarding and a big beam for the camera gives everyone the chance to join in the new year’s first five-star love-in, before positions are resumed and momentum regained.
Four minutes later Burgess fizzes a great free kick into the far corner, while the remainder of the first half is a pretty even affair, with Iron Man and Lawrence Jones (both wearing their traditional black boots) and Mother Brown (who isn’t) each proving to be extremely solid in the hosts’ back line, while HD handles everything in typically confident fashion from first whistle till last.
In the home end’s fashion stakes, Mother Fieldhouse is in matching black & yellow scarf and bobble hat, though Mother May has left her Sherlock at home for the fourth week running in a vain attempt to keep her name out of these pages. Mother Daniels has a sparkly arrangement atop her headwear; Father ‘Captain Scott’ Daniels hasn’t. Father Caple is modelling a suspiciously new-looking two shades of grey Gloucester RFC bobble hat as he waits anxiously for the new stock of black & yellows to reach the souvenir shop shelves, while Father Vye’s three shades of royal bonnet perfectly compliment the four blues he’s already wearing elsewhere. Father Burgess (more about him later) meanwhile, has seemingly perfected his right-foot-on-the-hoarding, right-hand-under-the-chin posture, a look very similar to the google-friendly bronze figure that lurks near the entrance of Paris’s Musee Rodin, both in terms of bodily demeanour and philosophical cogitation.
The hosts up the ante once the second half gets underway and Slider’s effort is well saved at the near post before Jones makes the previous evening’s fifty five minutes of line dancing completely worthwhile by heading in Burgess’s left wing corner.
With Issur Danielovitch and Lettuce continuing to threaten down the flanks and Vye and Burgess commanding through the centre, Obieri adds number four via another excellent finish and follows it with an equally impressive corner flag celebration.
On fifty one minutes, St Albans manager (Colonel) Nicholas Sanders has a double sinking feeling as he sits on the immediately-descending bench next to Coaches Sandiford and Lumsden, just as Jones converts another Burgess flag kick. HD quickly scans the crowd to check that Dan, Dan the University Man, who only deals in differentials of four isn’t present and senses that a Happy New Year clean sheet is now a distinct possibility.
JK (Rowling), having stayed behind as cover following The Yellows’ victory, enters the fray for the final eight minutes to spray some magic dust on Obieri, who completes his hat trick following Lettuce’s left wing cross in the very same instant the away bench totally disappears from view, though in all fairness the scorer’s cheek-to-cheek beam has more to do with maintaining his impressive conversion rate than the sudden aeration of the Longlevens Junior School playing field.
The team’s end-of-game, hand-slapping skip down the far touchline is generally well received, before kit is aimed in the general direction of the big blue bag in various modes - some neatly, some less so, some folded, some not - but all turned the right way out except for the number five shirt, which just goes to prove that despite his absence, the Curse of the Myatt still exerts its ghostly influence over the inner sanctum’s post-match proceedings. Everyone wears a jumper to the eating room though, meaning nobody needs to change again before descending on Sainsbury’s for the afternoon bag-pack. Worryingly, Obieri initially thinks bread is heavy and therefore needs to be placed at the bottom of the store’s bright orange carrier bags, but for the following ninety minutes he does nothing other than charm customers both young and older than young, who forgive him instantly for all potential misconceptions regarding gravitational mass or any other minor aberrations.
4.52pm. It’s full time at East Thurrock and despite the managerial change that sees Webby (GPSFA captain 1994/95) and Greener (GPSFA captain 1995/96) in caretaker charge, Hammo (GPSFA captain 2006/07) installed as stop-gap skipper and Hanksy (GPSFA captain 2004/05) back in centre mid, there’s no sign whatsoever of a revival at Rookery Hill, a horrid little place closeted in deepest Essex. It might be a new year and a new era with new hope, but little else seems to have changed. And as we all know, it’s the hope that kills.
Never mind; far more importantly, the compliments regarding the boys’ manners and interactivity are flooding in, as is the cash, with the final collection totalling a terrific £435.85, an Irish pound with a harp on the back, a Canadian two-cent piece and a pair of shiny metal discs of indeterminate origin.
As five o’clock comes and goes, the troops file out as Coach Wilson, for the fifth year running, does his weekend shopping via the scanning machines in order to avoid feeling the need to drop even a single penny into any of the collecting buckets. Father Burgess meanwhile goes one better. Despite having waited until ten past five to scan the shelves and thus assuming everyone else’s gone home, he finds El Capitano still in situ on the one remaining till and immediately does a runner under the pretext of having forgotten his credit card, leaving his offspring holding up both a big black bucket and a line of irate shoppers at exactly the same time.
Outside, somebody’s reversed into the back of my car, the note under the windscreen wiper only being discovered fifteen minutes after dropping Obieri off in Moredon Street. Mandy has seen everything and written a very helpful description in red biro on the back of a till receipt: ‘Your car was this afternoon bumped by a people carrier, registration number STA1, driven by a constantly scowling man wearing both a perpetual frown and a new, navy blue Nike jacket. There was a ‘#Up The Saints’ sticker in his rear window, while the pips on his clothing suggested he was some sort of colonel or other.’
If anyone can identify the perpetrator, please get in touch with my insurers as soon as possible.
Gloucester: High Definition; Mother Brown, Iron Man, Lawrence Oates; Issur Danielovitch, Slider, El Capitano, Lettuce; Beamer; JK Rowling.
Friday 28th-Sunday 30th December 2018. The Real Manager and dog are separately coerced into spending a weekend in the English ‘Riviera’ (see ‘exaggeration’), a three-day break which just happens to feature the Torquay United v GCFC game slap bang in the middle of it. The catering outlet behind the away end of the very impressive Plainmoor stadium, in which the ‘fried’ onions are extracted from a steaming vat with a highly questionable hygiene rating, is just about recognisable amongst the fly tipping detritus from the surrounding neighbourhood; a fitting location then for the 58 hungry but desperate souls who’ve made the 120-mile trip to south Devon to witness a 2-1 defeat. No revival, one goal and a tiny smidgen of hope.
New Year’s Day 2019. Coach Harris and The Lens are again in the car, heading for the Hartwell & Spiers on this occasion and the second leg of the Weston SM festive double / debacle (delete as appropriate). All are looking forward no doubt to some new year fireworks and the start of a winning run. Neither happen. Lose 3-1. No revival - and no fried onions either.
Wednesday 2nd January 2019. The GCFC forum’s been in overdrive ever since the manager’s morning proclamation that he can ‘turn it around’ and there’s a ‘plan in place’. Neither has been evident for the past fourteen (winless) games, so the signs aren’t altogether great.
Thursday 3rd January 2019. Twenty four hours after announcing ‘the plan’, the manager’s tended his resignation; his parting statement is synonymous with his reign and contains one grammatical error for every winless game under his tenure (plus two extras for luck). Happy New Year everyone! The Groundsman celebrates by painting the changing rooms black & yellow, but any ideas of a celebratory painting of the town red in the company of The Photographer are dashed due to the Big Red Machine having been out of action for the past ten days, meaning a state of austerity has descended on Abbotswood Road and all who live in it.
Friday 4th January 2019. After thirteen days in the footballing wilderness that is Gloucester City AFC, things are looking up as the real players return to an OSP that any self-respecting, mitten-wearing polar explorer would admit feels remarkably like home. Lettuce, modelling a brand new bright blue bobble hat and High Definition who isn’t, are first to arrive, thus continuing their old-year resolution that a high level of punctuality is good for the soul. Obieri has neither a new hat nor a working clock, so continues his old-year resolution also.
‘Lost’ warm-up tops are returned to Caple & Obieri for the first time this season and to Jones for the twelfth, before the same three amigos spend the next fifty five minutes standing in a line waiting for Burgess to drop in a corner or two.
Saturday 5th January 2019. Wasp and WC are both away on post-Xmas breaks; the former at a five-star French Alpine skiing resort in Nid de Guepe, the latter on a fortnight’s monastic retreat in Prinknash – fourteen uninterrupted days focusing on ‘Meditation & Memory’ (according to the front-page ad in last month’s ‘Local Answer’). The Groundsman’s also away after Thursday’s black & yellow exertions, recovering in Emergency Ward Ten at GRH; visiting times are 3.30-6.30pm and you can park for a fiver if you want to pop in for an anatomical discourse at any point.
The Yellows begin the day’s proceedings with an excellent display versus their St Albans counterparts, netting seven without reply to appropriately notch up their seventh consecutive victory against the league leaders. Coach Stalley, under the watchful, all-seeing eye of Father ‘Assessor’ Jones, swaps the yellow linesman’s flag for his pristine new black & gold Christmas-present logbook and runs the team through FA warm-up routine number 54, which (again) seems to involve people constantly skipping clockwise in a cone-created circle as if on some Springtime maypole celebration, despite the morning’s temperature at no point ever threatening to reach even a measly Diana Ross. Mother Brown, as you would expect, takes an instant shine to the prospect of an all-inclusive knees-up; HD, as you would expect, is summarily unimpressed and decides to watch the girls’ game instead.
There had been two major areas of pre-match concern. Firstly, the absence of Myatt means a change of tactics is required – someone else will need to carry the drinks - and secondly that Obieri’s gleaming new white boots might take the gloss off his performance due to him not wanting to compromise their eerily reflective scientific properties. Any anxiety though is quickly dissipated; Lettuce and Caple collect the bottles, before Burgess’s fine pass and Obieri’s excellent finish put us a goal to the good with just eight minutes on the timer. A quick rest on the advertising hoarding and a big beam for the camera gives everyone the chance to join in the new year’s first five-star love-in, before positions are resumed and momentum regained.
Four minutes later Burgess fizzes a great free kick into the far corner, while the remainder of the first half is a pretty even affair, with Iron Man and Lawrence Jones (both wearing their traditional black boots) and Mother Brown (who isn’t) each proving to be extremely solid in the hosts’ back line, while HD handles everything in typically confident fashion from first whistle till last.
In the home end’s fashion stakes, Mother Fieldhouse is in matching black & yellow scarf and bobble hat, though Mother May has left her Sherlock at home for the fourth week running in a vain attempt to keep her name out of these pages. Mother Daniels has a sparkly arrangement atop her headwear; Father ‘Captain Scott’ Daniels hasn’t. Father Caple is modelling a suspiciously new-looking two shades of grey Gloucester RFC bobble hat as he waits anxiously for the new stock of black & yellows to reach the souvenir shop shelves, while Father Vye’s three shades of royal bonnet perfectly compliment the four blues he’s already wearing elsewhere. Father Burgess (more about him later) meanwhile, has seemingly perfected his right-foot-on-the-hoarding, right-hand-under-the-chin posture, a look very similar to the google-friendly bronze figure that lurks near the entrance of Paris’s Musee Rodin, both in terms of bodily demeanour and philosophical cogitation.
The hosts up the ante once the second half gets underway and Slider’s effort is well saved at the near post before Jones makes the previous evening’s fifty five minutes of line dancing completely worthwhile by heading in Burgess’s left wing corner.
With Issur Danielovitch and Lettuce continuing to threaten down the flanks and Vye and Burgess commanding through the centre, Obieri adds number four via another excellent finish and follows it with an equally impressive corner flag celebration.
On fifty one minutes, St Albans manager (Colonel) Nicholas Sanders has a double sinking feeling as he sits on the immediately-descending bench next to Coaches Sandiford and Lumsden, just as Jones converts another Burgess flag kick. HD quickly scans the crowd to check that Dan, Dan the University Man, who only deals in differentials of four isn’t present and senses that a Happy New Year clean sheet is now a distinct possibility.
JK (Rowling), having stayed behind as cover following The Yellows’ victory, enters the fray for the final eight minutes to spray some magic dust on Obieri, who completes his hat trick following Lettuce’s left wing cross in the very same instant the away bench totally disappears from view, though in all fairness the scorer’s cheek-to-cheek beam has more to do with maintaining his impressive conversion rate than the sudden aeration of the Longlevens Junior School playing field.
The team’s end-of-game, hand-slapping skip down the far touchline is generally well received, before kit is aimed in the general direction of the big blue bag in various modes - some neatly, some less so, some folded, some not - but all turned the right way out except for the number five shirt, which just goes to prove that despite his absence, the Curse of the Myatt still exerts its ghostly influence over the inner sanctum’s post-match proceedings. Everyone wears a jumper to the eating room though, meaning nobody needs to change again before descending on Sainsbury’s for the afternoon bag-pack. Worryingly, Obieri initially thinks bread is heavy and therefore needs to be placed at the bottom of the store’s bright orange carrier bags, but for the following ninety minutes he does nothing other than charm customers both young and older than young, who forgive him instantly for all potential misconceptions regarding gravitational mass or any other minor aberrations.
4.52pm. It’s full time at East Thurrock and despite the managerial change that sees Webby (GPSFA captain 1994/95) and Greener (GPSFA captain 1995/96) in caretaker charge, Hammo (GPSFA captain 2006/07) installed as stop-gap skipper and Hanksy (GPSFA captain 2004/05) back in centre mid, there’s no sign whatsoever of a revival at Rookery Hill, a horrid little place closeted in deepest Essex. It might be a new year and a new era with new hope, but little else seems to have changed. And as we all know, it’s the hope that kills.
Never mind; far more importantly, the compliments regarding the boys’ manners and interactivity are flooding in, as is the cash, with the final collection totalling a terrific £435.85, an Irish pound with a harp on the back, a Canadian two-cent piece and a pair of shiny metal discs of indeterminate origin.
As five o’clock comes and goes, the troops file out as Coach Wilson, for the fifth year running, does his weekend shopping via the scanning machines in order to avoid feeling the need to drop even a single penny into any of the collecting buckets. Father Burgess meanwhile goes one better. Despite having waited until ten past five to scan the shelves and thus assuming everyone else’s gone home, he finds El Capitano still in situ on the one remaining till and immediately does a runner under the pretext of having forgotten his credit card, leaving his offspring holding up both a big black bucket and a line of irate shoppers at exactly the same time.
Outside, somebody’s reversed into the back of my car, the note under the windscreen wiper only being discovered fifteen minutes after dropping Obieri off in Moredon Street. Mandy has seen everything and written a very helpful description in red biro on the back of a till receipt: ‘Your car was this afternoon bumped by a people carrier, registration number STA1, driven by a constantly scowling man wearing both a perpetual frown and a new, navy blue Nike jacket. There was a ‘#Up The Saints’ sticker in his rear window, while the pips on his clothing suggested he was some sort of colonel or other.’
If anyone can identify the perpetrator, please get in touch with my insurers as soon as possible.
Gloucester: High Definition; Mother Brown, Iron Man, Lawrence Oates; Issur Danielovitch, Slider, El Capitano, Lettuce; Beamer; JK Rowling.
