So, how many Reserve team players does it take to put a goal net up? Four? Seven? Might it depend on who they are? Well,
if the empirical evidence provided by the team’s antics on Saturday, October 25th, 2008 was supposed to help
solve one of life’s most protracted and perennially perplexing conundrums, it failed miserably.
On this day, with the third team kicking off, at home, in the County Cup against Wickwar at 2.00 pm on the middle pitch
at Bishops Cleeve Playing Fields, the Reserves were treated to the rare privilege of being able to entertain their visitors,
Bredon Reserves, on the Northern Senior League pitch that is usually the provision of the first team and AC Olympia. Although
no one realised it at the time, this presented the team with a quandary. One of the goals was significantly further away from
the changing rooms than the other – not a problem that they experience very often on the middle pitch, where both sets
of posts are, more or less, equidistant from the pavilion. So, which goal net should the finely honed athletes that populate
the Reserve team these days volunteer to help put up? Should it be the one that was just 30 yards away from the changing room
and which was already demanding the attention of four or five team mates, or should it be the one at the far end, where two
poor saps were struggling on their own with the rigging in winds that were building up to gale force.
Simple!!! In the end, 13 individuals were engaged by the task of erecting the goal net at the Pavilion end of the Northern
Senior League pitch. Up the other end, the two poor sods who must have thought that everyone else had gone home, struggled
for 15 minutes before the referee inspected their work and told them that they had missed a bit!!
So how many Reserve team players does it take to put up a goal net? Well, if it is only 30 yards away, it needs 13 –
four to fix it to the cross bar, two to tie it to each upright, one to hold the skewers, one to beat them back into shape
and three others to position them, one on each side and one for the rear of the net.
If its 150 yards away, and the nets, bags, skewers and stool need carrying all that way before the net is then erected,
it only needs two!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
