The Pickwick Papers - a warning against the perils of pre-season optimism

“It was the best of times and it was the best of times” - so wrote Charles Dickens in the pre-season of 1854 having witnessed his heroes, the Pickwick Gentlemen Strollers, hammer Worley Village Enthusiasticals in their opening warm-up friendly of the year.

Dickens recorded his hopes for the season in various diary entries, few of which have ever made it into the public sphere before now. “Victory swells within us”, he wrote, before adding, “I stand in goodly admiration of the intertwixity of youth and experience among our brave fellows”

Speaking on the subject of his team’s early performances in practice matches he was particularly impressed by the showing against a Select XI culled from the Shoreditch Refuge for the Permanently Bewildered.

Star striker Ernest Plainspeak had netted an impressive nine goals including one which he propelled to the net via his moustache, and another in which he encouraged the ball over the line simply by giving it a stern talking to. Meanwhile, goalkeeper Portly Eatwell had kept his first clean sheet of the year due, largely, to the convenient fact that his ample frame was even wider than that of the goal.

“I cannot, in all faith,” Dickens wrote, “imagine any less an achievement than third position on the order of merit and thus an ensuing adventure upon the wider continent”.

In terms of squad development, Stroller’s manager Sir Herbert Beerbohm Twizzlewit had added several able bodies to the squad and was, as yet, untroubled by the loss of midfield playmaker Charlie Finefellow to the 4th Light Dragoons who were, at that very moment, en route to the Ukraine and a vital fixture in the Crimean War.

On the commercial front a new sponsorship deal had been struck with The League for the Advancement of Moral Rectitude which promised to funnel a steady supply of derelict souls towards the Strollers hitherto leaky back line. And, furthermore, having recently invented oranges, the Strollers’ club physician Dr Charles Milkington Bloodbody was optimistic that the issue of players dying of scurvy in the latter stages of games had finally been solved.

Things were looking up and no mistake. “We are upon the cusp,” Dickens recorded, “the cusp of something quite magnificent. My soul thrills at the prospect of all.”

Sadly, the season proper soon began and the flaws in the Strollers’ make-up became apparent. Eatwell’s girth, while of great benefit during home games, prohibited him from boarding the club charabanc, leaving Twizzlewit’s men fatally compromised on the road. Ever the thinker, the Stroller’s manager would set up station by the goal and loudly proclaim his opposition to the female vote. The hope being that a passing suffragette might take umbrage and chain herself to the goal-frame, thus partially obscuring the target. This rarely came to pass.

It was a cunning but sadly insufficient ruse and the Strollers went on to concede an ungentlemanly quantity of away goals. Further issues arose when it became clear that the entire team were chronically addicted to both laudanum and frivolous wagers. It is difficult, at any level of the game, to apply oneself properly to midfield duties while simultaneously nurturing a hookah and attempting to last nine rounds with a boxing kangaroo.

Throughout the season several key players were lost to in-game duelling. A setback which did at least precipitate the governing body’s introduction of the less damaging practice of ‘handbags’, whereby players who found themselves involved in differences of opinion would stand back-to-back, take ten paces and then hurl their wives’ fashion accessories at each other. Nor was the Strollers’ cause aided by Dr Bloodbody’s insistence on treating even the most minor injuries with leeches and arterial bleeding, even unto the point of unconsciousness. By mid-season Dickens was becoming alarmed.

“The avenue of our success is darkening”, he lamented, “Shadows lower above us like doom itself and one can only hope that we will turn the corner, sharpish”

As the season matured the pressure on Twizzlewit had developed to the point where he took to the bed with a severe dose of the vapours and the tutelage of the team was left in the hands of a shady character called Higgins who had hitherto earned his living in the dubious arena of carnival freak-shows. Higgins brought with him an imposing central defender with a keen eye for a scything tackle and little regard for the laws of the land. O’Thuggery, for that was his name, proved a double edged sword in the team’s efforts to avoid the peril of relegation. On the up-side he represented a formidable obstacle to any opposing forward with designs on breaching the Strollers goal. On the down-side he was a seven foot bearded lady with a history of murdering prostitutes and selling their body parts to the sciences.

Several of the club’s Loyal Supporters Association went missing in mysterious circumstances along with one of his fellow defenders who made the mistake of publicly challenging his dedication to personal hygiene. The finger of suspicion pointed at O’Thuggery and his contribution to the team’s fortunes finally came to an end when he was caught robbing a cemetery in Bermondsey and replacing the empty graves with the still breathing bodies of various referees who had taken exception to his uniquely aggressive approach to the game. Needless to say the FA were not amused and dished out a heavy suspension.

“We simply cannot condone the burying alive of our officials”, an FA spokesman complained, “and to not act would send out the wrong signals”. Amid some protests that the game was losing its edge, O’Thuggery’s season was over. Dickens was devastated. “If referees can’t take a bit of banter and the occasional horrific murder then I don’t know what the game’s coming to”, he wrote in a letter to his good friend, Charles Darwin.

As a disappointing season drew to an end the Strollers were left with a crucial relegation decider against fellow strugglers FC Real Walmington-on-sea Carthusians, a team that had been formed in protest at the take-over of Walmington-on-sea Carthusians FC by a wealthy Vaudeville tycoon who had made his money monopolising the image rights of round-the-world hot air balloonists.

The game started badly for the Strollers. ‘Keeper Eatwell had undergone a gastric bypass operation, performed expertly by Dr Bloodbody with no more anaesthetic than some boiled sweets and stern instructions ‘not to fuss’. Shorn of some 300 lbs of fat, Eatwell was only now revealed to be 12 years of age and not very good at goalkeeping.

Walmington raced into a four goal lead before matters deteriorated still further for the Strollers when midfielder Arthur Steadfast was press-ganged into Her Majesty’s navy while straying into a neighbouring field to retrieve the ball. With the Strollers reduced to ten men the scoreline expanded accordingly and an ill-tempered melee shortly into the second period further reduced their numbers.

“I am uncertain as to which game the umpire was perusing”, Dickens later wrote, “but I can fain believe it was the same which passed before my disbelieving eyes. I respectfully forward the possibility that he is uncertain as to the understanding of what he is doing”

Come the final whistle the Strollers had been comprehensively bested and a future in the wasteland that was the Whitechapel Amateur Football League Division 3B Sunday beckoned.

Harkening back to the warm glow of pre-season optimism, Dickens wondered where and how it had all gone so terribly wrong. “T’is too much to bear,” he wrote. “All hope is gone. Oh that we might have stayed forever in those primrose fields of pre-season, bathed in the gentle light of a new dawn and all that was yet to come. But the world will turn and hurry us ever onwards. On to what cannot be but a lesser, more cruel world. And when the morning comes again and sadness is forgot, will we remember this dark hour? I hope and pray that we will not”.