A Saturday Day Off

Amazingly Wrexham actually had some of their players playing in the Welsh Under 21 game today. I say amazing, because if you'd seen how ineffectual the Wrexham players were when we won easily at the Racecourse a few weeks ago, the last thing you would imagine is any of these players playing International football at any level. And that includes Subbuteo.


But Under 21's seems to be a curious level of national recognition. Irvin Gernon played for England at that level! OK, the National boss was his former club Manager, but still that's pretty impressive achievement for a player with such a moderate amount of talent. On the subject of small talent, who can forget Nathan Koo-Boothe's Under 21 International status?

Certainly not we fans who were forced to read about it in matchday programmes the length and breadth of Conference North. Wow, the opposition fans must have thought, he must be good. They are soon cured of this opinion 45 seconds after kick-off and his third consecutive clearance goes straight in the air. One can only assume that when he played, the entire island of Jamaica had only 11 men under the age of 21. Mind you, even then he should have been on the bench.


In the absence of Poppies action today we all had to find something else to waste 90 minutes of our life on. Not being some sort of sad-case groundhopper who simply must watch 22 men huff and puff after a seemingly greasy ball, even though they don't especially care who wins, I got as far away from football as possible. Or so I thought. I found that even traipsing around Fineshade Woods you can't quite escape football. One of the RSPB volunteers at the woods was a certain Geoff Williamson, former Poppies director, under the reign of Gingell the Glorious.


Should I have said hello? Should I have mentioned to him that in my younger days I used to draw nasty little cartoons in which he prominently appeared? Should I have asked him where all the money went to during his tenure? Nah, it was a nice sunny day, and it's always easier to be brave from behind your keyboard!