Fun in the sun!

(Or how Owen’s Army surprised everyone – including themselves – at the Danny Mardell Knockout Challenge Cup tournament played at the Boleyn Ground)

It all started a month or so back when the forum’s “Basingstoke Hammer” mentioned that he had got a team together to play in a charity football tournament on the hallowed turf at the Boleyn. The Danny Mardell Knockout tournament is organised in aid of the Downs Syndrome Association. Now I’m not one of those who has a tendency to get overly involved in charity things. I buy a poppy every year but that’s about it really. Having said that, as many of you will know my youngest brother Geoff was born with Downs and so if I needed any justification for my shelling out for a place on the team it was there.

I arrived at the ground first thing where I bumped into my colleagues on the Internet Hammers team who had also entered a couple of teams. They had good and bad news for me. The good news was that one of the opposition goalkeepers was older (Definitely) and fatter (possibly) than I was. The bad news was that his name was Neville Southall.

I hooked up with my team-mates from Owen’s Army, a team named after Basingstoke Hammer’s son who also has Down’s Syndrome. I tried in vain to remember everyone’s name but was hampered by the fact that everyone seemed to be called “Dave”. Despite this none of my new team mates seemed bothered by this and, indeed none of them resorted to using the “Trigger” nickname I probably deserved.

We were placed in Group 2 whose matches were played in front of the Chicken Run at the Centenary end of the ground. Our first match was played against Neville Southall’s side. They were a bit good – as evidenced by the four goals they stuck past us in during the 12 minute length of the match. Me? I consoled myself with the knowledge that I had at least forced Mr Southall into couple of saves, (assuming one were to take some diabolical liberties with the words “forced” and “save”). Southall took all the banter with excellent good humour and, as someone who is no stranger to the no. 1 shirt I was able to supply him with a few goalkeeping tips for which he was probably really grateful I expect.


A grateful Neville Southall thanks Gnome for pointing out where he’s been going wrong all these years.

So to the second game. We decided to embark on a game plan of sorts. All ten of us got our heads together and agreed on how we were to be organised. I can’t remember exactly what the plan was but it seemed to involve having a settled starting line-up with pre-arranged substitutions when required – and with temperatures in the high 80s they really were required. Amazingly it seemed to work. Despite what was becoming a trade mark customary poor start, going an early goal behind, we rallied and scored some fine goals, mainly from the boots of Dave, and, possibly, Dave.

Then, towards the end came my own personal moment of what we will call for argument’s sake refer to as “glory”. Latching on to a loose ball on the left I beat two players. More accurately I bludgeoned my way through a couple of ineffective challenges. At the end of this, er, run, I managed to prod the ball into the path of Dave who buried another powerful shot past the ‘keeper. OK it wasn’t much of an assist but it still counted as one and, as such, I could console myself with the knowledge that it was probably infinitely better than anything that, for example, John Radford had done on the same pitch in his time with the club and no-one can take that away from me!

So two games in and we’d actually won one of them. We could actually say we’d won a match at Upton Park. Which is precisely what we all did as the mobile phone networks became full of text messages to friends and family. Even if the wheels were to fall off in the remaining games we could be proud of doing something that, to take two completely random examples, neither Sp*rs nor Ar*enal had managed last season.

So on to the third game. Although none of us could remember precisely what the game plan had been in game 2, we all agreed that it had worked jolly well so we used the same starting line-up in game three. Amazingly it worked once more. Despite the opposition skipper’s useful instruction to his side of “don’t forget to breathe”, we ran out worthy 3-1 winners once more. As the first goal went in, the lovely young lady who was organising our group asked me the name of our goalscorer. It was a mistake she was not to repeat.

As we arrived at our “home” pitch for the final group game we were greeted by the news that, despite our (ok my) age, lack of pace and the opening 4-0 drubbing, we now found ourselves needing only a point to qualify for the knockout stages. A quick team meeting before the match suggested that we should, once more, stick with the tactics that had served us well up to that point, whatever they were. I’m not sure but I think our final group opponents might have been in with a shout of qualifying had they beaten us. They certainly had a fair chunk of possession but a lot of hard work – principally by my team-mates - limited the opposition to long range chances which were by and large off-target (though Dave in goal was equal to anything that did happen to go on target). A fine solo effort from Dave late on gave us the win and saw us through.

This was something we hadn’t quite prepared for and meant that the proposed visit to the bar for some well-earned cold pints had to be postponed for at least one match. In fact the first question that was asked was “how the hell did that happen?” By this time, although we didn’t have the faintest idea of what was going right we thought we’d carry on doing it anyway. I spent the rest period texting everyone I know that I was about to play in a quarter final at the Boleyn – and I meant the ground and not the pub.

The quarter final was a tight affair with one goal being good enough to settle it – and we got it. The opposition were limited to long-range efforts that gave Dave few problems. The match seemed to pass remarkably quickly despite the heat and, not that I was complaining, I was convinced that there was still a few minutes to play when the final whistle went. Given that we’d been stuffed 4-0 in our first match, the odds at the local Ladbokes on our getting past the group stages must have been astronomical. However, talk to the effect that the ref had blown for full-time just after getting the nod from a Malaysian betting syndicate were probably just rumours put out by the Internet Hammers sides who were reduced to having a kickabout on a spare pitch having failed to qualify!

We had a further worry about the semi-final. The final was scheduled for after 4.00pm – after the conclusion of the England match that was taking place in the Charity Tournament in Aid Of Sepp Blatter’s Back Pocket that was taking place in Germany. This meant that, should we progress to the final, we’d have to endure 90 minutes of an England international without alcohol – and as we all know they are difficult enough to watch at the best of times. We needn’t have worried. We took an early lead which had the opposition rattled for, ooh, about two minutes. Unfortunately the semi-final turned out to be one match too far for Owen’s Army as we let in five goals without further reply. The match did contain one moment of high farce as our opponents suddenly found themselves incurring the wrath of the referee who had clearly been itching to flourish his yellow cards. Their crime? Not shouting their intention to make a substitution at the ref loud enough. This resulted in two players facing the sin bin until the intervention of the lovely organiser persuaded him that life was probably too short. The lovely organiser told me that the same ref had earlier kicked up a fuss about allowing a teenage girl with Down’s to play in a group match on the grounds that the match wasn’t part of an “official FA mixed under-10” tournament. You might think that the official was a bit of a jobsworth. I couldn’t possibly comment.

So we exited the tournament. We’d come to the Boleyn with the sole aim of just enjoying ourselves. The fact that we’d made it so far was an unexpected bonus and the stupid grins on our faces after said it all. We returned to our base in the West Stand Lower where our new best mate Neville Southall looked gutted at having gone out in the other semi final. We gratefully accepted the cold pints that had been waiting for us and watched the England v Paraguay match, though we’d probably have needed a skinfull to make sense of the second half.

The final? Well we were fairly happy that the 3 Irons team won it just so we could say that we’d been knocked out by the eventual winners and, although we cast a few envious glances at the competing teams, these were (in my case anyway) tempered by the fact that the pitch looked awfully big as the day got hotter and hotter.

After the final we picked up our medals. Mine’s going next to my Southern Amateur League Minor Section Championship winner’s shield from 1986/87 in my trophy room at home. The festivities went on long into the evening though a prior engagement meant that I had to go and show off my medal at the barbecue hosted by the lovely Margot.

Thanks must go to the Down’s Syndrome Association for setting up the whole event – especially the lovely young ladies doing the organisation. If there were any logistical glitches I certainly wasn’t aware of them. Major mega large thanks to Owen’s Army (back row: Michael “Wads” Wadkins, Martin Cullinane, Dave Ferns, Dave Burkett, James Satwick, Simon “Nells” Nellor (with Freddy “Baby” Nellor” Front Row: John “Rodders” Whitehall, Rich “Mike Bassett” Corby, Brad Corby, (me) and Peter Philpott). In particular thanks to Rich Corby for allowing me to blag a place on the squad and also to those who were kind enough to sacrifice themselves each match to allow me my five minutes of glory from the bench.

If they do the same thing again next year I can honestly recommend the event as a day out – it was a brilliant atmosphere and the stupid grin on my face has been fixed there ever since Saturday. See you there (legs permitting!).


Owen’s Army 10 June 2006: Back Row L-R: Dave, Dave, Dave, Dave, Dave, Baby Dave, Dave; Front Row L-R: Dave, Dave, Dave Jr, Gnome, Dave.


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