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Once upon a time, on a footie pitch far, far away. My son Lewis was mad on football and wanted to join a team. I could think of no team better than the team I played for myself, Woodley Hammers.
I took Lewis along as an under7 player. The set up at the time was, an A side run by Julian Waller and a Colts side run by Neil Minell. Lewis originally joined the A side, but it soon became obvious he was not happy. Lewis’s main complaint was no one passed the ball to him. At under 7 you quite often get some boys dominating, they take the ball and have only one thing in mind, “where’s the goal”.
I therefore took the decision to drop Lewis down to play for the Colts team. Neil was a wonderful Manager, especially when you consider he had no Son in the side and was doing the job as a favour to Julian. Lewis flourished in the Colts and his confidence grew no end, becoming top goal scorer for two seasons.
Suddenly Neil left. A change of jobs and a change of commitments. Neil’s daughters were swimming and dancing on Saturday mornings. Like a fool I stepped into the breach, and became the Manager of the Colts.
With the A side settled, the Colt side bore the brunt of any new players arriving at the Club. With so many boys it became obvious we needed a third side. Julian and I had always stated we would not turn away any boys who wanted to play football. All that was required was someone stupid enough to manage the third team. Up stepped Steve Trevethan, and the C team was born.
Boys of a certain age can sometimes say things which aren’t very nice. We were getting reports of, “you’re only a C team player”, “your not good enough for the A side or B side”. It was decided we should lose the stigma of A, B and C and give the teams names.
The idea for the names, came from the history of Woodley itself. Woodley was at one time very important in the world of aviation. The airfield at Woodley is now a sea of houses, but was once the home of the Reading Aero Club. It was on this site that Douglas Bader had the crash which cost him both his legs. Woodley was also the home of an important aircraft manufacturer, Miles Aircraft. The miles Aircraft factory was situated on Headley Road East, where some of the original buildings still remain. Most of the Miles aircraft were named after birds of prey, so we decided to name the teams after members of the Miles Aircraft family. A list was drawn up of possible names and the boys from all three teams voted on their favourites. The top three names were, Falcon, Hawk and the Mohawk. Julian, Steve and I simply picked our team names from a hat. I picked Hawk, and so the Woodley Hammers Hawks were born.
At this time all three sides were playing seven a side mini football. Within the Hawks it became obvious at the end of our U10 season we had outgrown the mini football format. We had players able to kick from one corner to the other and a keeper in danger of scoring every week from flykicks! In order to play 11 a side big boys football, we would have to play up a year and play in an under 12 league. The original idea was to combine all three teams into two 11 a side squads. Things changed overnight, as the Falcons, (now under new management) decided they wanted to play another year in the mini football arena. With only weeks till the start of the season we only had a 7 a side squad. All the boys were urged to bring along any friends they had who might want to play. This worked, and with three players moving over from the Falcons side, we had a healthy squad of fifteen. Pre-season we only had the chance of one friendly game. This was against Yateley Juniors U12, who were to be in our league next year. The game was won by the Hawks a convincing 12-1, so we were optimistic about the start of the new season.
The Hawks took to the 11 a side game like ducks to water. In our first season we came a credible 4th in the league and got to the final of the league cup. Most of the season we were even contenders for runners up spot being edged out in the last few games.
So here we are awaiting September and the start of the new season. The Hawks will be staying at U12 and so will be playing lads our own age again. We have however been placed in division 1, so we’re going to have a tough season.
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