by Chris Harris
It had been a miserable weekend for Greg Lyons.
The new Pro Boards forum, administered by Mr Dribble, his nemesis, had appeared, like an unwanted own goal for an opposition winner.
All morning Greg had been on the phone and on Zoom calls with various showroom managers, doing what he always on a Monday, the speed and intensity of his methodology of work erasing thoughts of Mr Dribble.
At eleven, he drove down to the ground.
He parked by the adjacent field and stood watching the heavy plant machinery hacking into his adjacent field. It was being dug up in earnest now, not being debated but actually happening as the income stream and doubtless aggro of the 3g and padel board pitch began to take shape.
A crane mounted on the back of a lorry swung round, unloading huge irrigation pipes. Greg found himself smiling. He wasn’t a man for idle talk and endless planning. He liked action. Seeing the ground changing and improving lifted him. He hadn’t checked the forum again. He’d told himself not to. But in the back of his mind he knew 0.1% of the Denham Phoenix FC would always be critical.
As Economical Tony espoused the virtues of the cheaper pipes he had sourced over the branded ones “Chinese, but just as good,” Greg began to relax and see the funnier side of Mr Dribble’s posts. After all, it was only an opinion. Mr Dribble was allowed to have one. People were allowed to “hold him to account”, as they loved to say these days. And if Mr Dribble compared Greg to Del Boy… well, everyone loved Del Boy, didn’t they?
Later, at six o’clock the directors gathered by the new food hut that had just been built. Catherine Brown had organised a small topping-out ceremony—her idea of celebration was always going to be quick, cheap and practical. She served everyone a drink.
The hut looked fantastic. Not charming in the old non-league way, dishevelled, but charming in the Catherine Brown personal touch way.
Greg and Catherine were in a good mood. They’d met the Chichester directors off the coach, done the polite introductions.
Greg hated this part. Meeting directors was his least favourite task.
Directors, he’d decided, were a strange breed. Some did it out of love for the club. Some did it the way town councillors did it: not for the love of the local area, but for the love of themselves. The Chichester directors nodded at the plans and made approving noises, but their attention kept drifting to Catherine.
Men had a special way of behaving in groups when they were all slightly attracted to someone and trying not to show it, which meant they did show it, constantly, and very badly.
The pitch looked immaculate. Charlie had done a magnificent job. It had never looked better.
Greg had never quite warmed to Charlie. They got on well enough, and Greg told himself it had nothing to do with the fact that Charlie was Catherine’s partner. It was just… something about him. Something in the way he stood around the place, as if he was always listening but always looking pensive. Greg didn’t trust that.
As the crowd thickened, Big Mal began doing what Big Mal did best: walking around the ground, chatting, smiling, making himself available.
He spoke to everyone. He offered help. He listened.
There was always an ulterior motive behind Big Mal’s friendliness.
He loved Greg Lyons—loved him in the way people love a man they can both admire and quietly take the piss out of. Greg was kind. Greg was powerful. Big Mal had been shocked by the effect of Mr Dribble’s posts on Greg. And he’d made it his business that day to compile a list: the names of everyone who’d gone to the Potters Bar match, one of them Mr Dribble.
The match began, and in the first half, there was little action in the opposition box. The football was controlled, cautious and risk-assessed as normal. Disappointment began to cloud over the directors heads.
But in the second half, at nil-nil, something changed.
They started moving the ball forward faster. The wingers stayed wider. The passing became sharper. The whole thing started to breathe.
Three times they broke, and three times the ball was dropped perfectly onto an unmarked head of Junior Bents, four goals in two games, straight into the Chichester net.
After the match, Ed Stevens was interviewed for the YouTube channel. Dean—always a brilliant interviewer—asked the right questions without making it about himself. Ed described it as a victory for common sense.
“Sound defence,” he said, “and attacking on the break. People have to understand defence is an art form. It’s not something that should be dismissed as dull.”
It was one of those lines that sounded like it had been suggested by Dean pre-interview.
At the end of the interview Ed looked into the camera and grinned.
“The wheels on the bus are speeding up,” he said, “and we’re top of the table.”
He winked. Dean thanked him. The camera cut.
Aidy had badly sprained his ankle when he stepped and fell off the coach, drunk on the Saturday, returning from Potters Bar.
It was the sort of injury that, in theory, should have kept him off his feet for a week. The doctor had been very clear: rest it, keep it elevated, no weight on it, come back if it swells. All the usual instructions delivered from a doctor who knows they’re talking to a man who won’t do any of it.
Aidy nodded through the whole thing impatiently waiting for the end of the sermon.
He was a stoical drinker and mthey don’t rest and recover during the first home game of the season. They simply adapted accordingly to the new terrain and physical challenges. A pair of redundant clutches from a former broken leg, incurred when he was drunk, were dug out from his shed.
So on Tuesday afternoon, he took a half day. It was tradition. Tuesday evening kick-off meant Tuesday afternoon kicking off in the Red Lion, a few early pints. He went into the pub on his crutches.
The Red Lion had that familiarity that made Aidy feel happy. Apart from that bloody foot, all was good with the world. A few regulars and barflies were left over from lunchtime service as he swung his injured foot up on the metal stool rest as if it was some grand war injury.
Maxwell was already there, of course. Maxwell always was. He was semi-retired, and his semi-retirement was spent in the Red Lion. They were thick as thieves, Aidy loud and pompous, but warm and kind. Maxwell was quieter and reserved, but still could cane back the ales and lagers, switching variety to seemingly add some intrigue to the relentless consumption of pints.
Maxwell couldn’t keep up with Ady’s drinking, not at the rate he went, but he ran him close.
At six o’clock the pub began to fill with other supporters, a few with replica kits and the pre season buzz began in earnest. By the time they left for the ground they’d already had more than enough for mere mortals. They got a couple more in before kick-off, because it allowed enough time to have three or four during the game without rushing.
By the end of the match they were blind drunk.
Aidy’s crutches, which he’d been “mastering” for the last couple of days, were now a law unto themselves as they returned to the Red Lion for more. He lurched and laughed and jabbed them into the pavement as they made their way out with the crowd, He kept talking and joking, insisting he could walk perfectly well if everyone would just stop fussing.
It was as they were walking back along the path to the Red Lion when his left crutch didn’t land on the pavement. It landed on the road. Ady leaned on it automatically, trusting the crutch to be where it was meant to be. He shifted his weight onto it and lost his balance and stumbled sideways into the road into an oncoming van. The driver saw the movement and his low speed and swerve meant Aidy’s injuries were not life threatening. The van stopped a few yards on, the brake lights glowing red. Someone screamed.
The driver had barely stopped as Aidy was already trying to sit up, telling everyone not to fuss. Within what felt like seconds the Big Mal, Lucy and Economical had arrived with cones from the training pitch as they waited for the emergency services. Dean had also rushed up to check on the shaken driver, aware it was an accident, to comfort him. “Is he dead?” he blurted out through tears of fear.
The paramedics knelt beside him, looking mildly irritated. A preventable injury is part of the gig, but when the victim is slaughtered drunk, sympathy is in short supply. They checked his head, asked him his name, shone a light in his eyes, then cut the trainer away and revealed the foot turned slightly outward like it was trying to escape the alcohol. The police arrived to routinely breathalyse the driver. The X-ray confirmed it was an unstable fracture. He went into surgery for plates and screws, woke up in hospital with a boot, a morphine hangover.
Big Mal said to Tony, “I don’t know why the police want to meet us” but a couple of officers turned up as arranged at 11am the next day.
“The thing is, Mr. Lyons”, the officer said, “it’s actually against the law to serve alcohol to people who are already drunk and we can actually have your licence removed if something like this happens again. It’s not being nanny state, it’s the Licensing Act 2003. Under section 141 it’s an offence to sell alcohol to a person who is drunk. And section 142 makes it an offence to obtain alcohol for someone who’s already drunk. That includes buying rounds.” He paused, letting it sink in. “We’re not here to ruin the fun and the police generally turn a blind eye, Mr Lyons. But this is the kind of thing that becomes a serious issue very quickly if it involves the emergency services being called out.”
This was like an actual body blow to Greg Lyons. He found it genuinely upsetting, feeling the ground shift under him as the man in charge realised there were genuinely important aspects of his club he simply didn’t understand. It hadn’t even occurred to him, this aspect of the governance. Everything was getting so complicated. Everyone always got drunk and walked back to the village. He’d never been in a pub without there being somebody drunk. Yet here it was, plain as day: technically it was illegal. Big Mal was the licensee, he should have known, but Greg wouldn’t have expected him to, he wasn’t one for rules, so the only positive upshot was he would have to talk to Catherine Brown.
He popped into her coffee shop as it closed on the Wednesday, as arranged.
“I’ve looked everything up. The good news is I can be a licensee as well as Big Mal, so he does not need to have his arrangement removed, and if I know him, after last night, he’ll be delighted to have someone responsible in charge. I’ll need to sit licensee exams, they are a cinch. The police have a statutory obligation to warn about serving people who are drunk, but it is never enforced. It is a measure used for closing down errant venues,”
“Phew. So nothing to see here? a relieved Greg sighed.
“Not as simple as that, look do you want a coffee Greg?” He wasn’t expecting a gesture of friendliness but accepted, fighting the urge to drop to his knees in unadulterated relief that Catherine Brown had offered a olive branch, at least something he could hold onto.
She explained how many aspects of the clubhouse were borderline illegal, not expensive at all to sort out, but if the club was to expand, now was probably a good time to start to shake up the catering so the club always traded safely and legally.
She could see Greg had been knocked for six, and as he left to go and see Aidy at the hospital, she gave him a gentle hug, “Don’t worry, Greg, it will be fine, leave it with me.” Greg had a tear in his eye as he returned to his car, not just the relief of a hug, but he had been shocked and now felt partially responsible for last night’s accident, now just relieved it had not been anything worse.
Aidy felt like the returning hero as Maxwell rolled him into the Red Lion for maximum effect at 2pm, at its pre match busiest, four days after the accident for Denham v Cray Wanderers. General cheers and claps greeted our hero, who shockingly sat drinking an orange juice and lemonade, circled by his lackeys, who he spun a very good yarn about how bad it had all been and how stoical he had been.
He began to sermonise. Yes, the last few days he’d been thinking very much about his drinking quota, hence the soft drink. As Maxwell parked the wheelchair by the side of the pitch, his resolve had broken, 2.45, forty five minutes, but still a record, and Maxwell was dispatched to the bar to start racking up the pints. A good win today would cement Denham Phoenix FC’s top place. And as the various board members congregated together in between the halfway line and the bar, it was with a hope that they would win, but that the improvement in style would still be there.
They had nothing to fear as Denham came out 2 – 0 victors, and it was the first game where they weren’t subjected to trench warfare, defending their lines as if their lives depended on it, but actually kicked the ball around a bit and actually carried out six attacks, which is pretty much the same number as they did in the pre season friendly routine. The handful of Cray Wanderers supporters attempt at The Wheels on the Bus, petering out within 15 minutes of kick off.
What a week it had been. It even seemed that Mr Dribble had gone away. The beers flowed in the clubhouse. Aidy was the recipient of free beer after free beer for his heroism, a sober Economical Tony pushing his wheelchair to the Red Lion as Catherine and Charlie closed at 8. She’d been very friendly to him again. He was getting sniffy looks from Charlie, which pleased him no end. He didn’t know why. He was feeling so much better than that low point of last weekend, until the notification came through.
New post from Mr Dribble. Simply titled, The Shitshow Continues. It said, ‘Delboy needs to understand there’s a lot more to running a football club than showing off his money and buying everyone drinks. One of our fans was nearly killed this week because he’s so busy trying to cream as much money and profit as he can out of the bar. This man is such a spiv. When are people gonna wake up.’
A few people had posted replies ripping Mr Dribble to pieces. He recognised one PeppermintM. The three giveaways were the Big Mal typos, Mal loved peppermints and the M, but he loved him for it. Greg was drunk by this point, so it didn’t dampen his spirit, so the pair returned to Greg’s house to have a nightcap. Greg loved pouring out his heart to Big Mal about the club and his love for Catherine Brown and Big Mal loved being his confidant. No matter how tough things were, Greg always had Big Mal.
Next week: The Sussex Senior Cup, work on the stand begins and is there trouble in paradise? (Catherine Brown and Charlie)
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Welcome to Denham nr Lewes 