Woodridge Wanderers
The Birth and Death of a Soccer Team
by
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It will be no surprise that the people of Woodridge were also famous for what even other
Bert Henderson, ambulance driver, was almost as under-employed as Jack. His last call had been five weeks ago when Henry Stringer suffered a heart attack while eating his Sunday lunch. Bert and his assistant ’Arold had found Henry nose-down in his mashed potato and gravy. They put him on a stretcher and carried him to the ambulance where they applied oxygen and shocked his heart back into activity before taking him to
Meanwhile, in the recovery room, Dr. Singh popped his head around the door to check on Henry’s condition, “Patient ok, nurse? Let me know if anything happens. By the way, you’ve got gravy dribbling down your chin.”
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About the Book
In this hilarious satirical fantasy a travelling circus has a gruesome road accident in which the owner and ringmaster receives a head injury that ends his career when he can no longer wear a ringmaster's hat. Wanting to stay in the entertainment industry, he applies for and gets the position of Manager of Woodridge Wanderers, the local professional soccer team.
He gets rid of all the existing players and installs his circus performers, even though none had previously played competitive soccer. The performers quickly showed they posessed unique skills that lent themselves well to the game. For example, the ape trainer became a superb goalkeeper, diverting shots while swinging one-handed from the crossbar, munching bananas; and the two-headed man was irresistible when the ball was in the air. In some cases the injuries the performers had sustained provided an advantage. The tall man had lost a foot, receiving a gorilla's foot as replacement, but one leg was now substantially shorter than the other producing an ability to turn very quickly.
The unlikely group became the best soccer team in England and were universally admired but their home stadium in Woodridge was always half empty. Until one day, one of the players was evaporated in the middle of a game by what appeared to be a nuclear missile. This was a turning point for the team as the locals began to take notice. But the bizarre deaths had to continue in order to sustain the interest of the locals.
The book follows the exploits of the team and whoever was determined to kill them off; the comical efforts of the police to find the murderer(s); the press campaign against the latest escalation in soccer crowd violence; and the social changes occurring in Woodridge as a result of the town's new-found fame.
About the Author
Howard Crabtree is a retired former business executive now living with his wife, Carolyn, in Coronado, California. This is his first book.
He grew up in Yorkshire where the story is set and played soccer in the Yorkshire League. After living and working in the U.K., Netherlands, and Kenya, his work brought him to the U.S. to live in 1984 and he has remained here ever since. He is a citizen of both the U.S. and the U.K.
Howard has written short stories and articles for many years when time permitted. Most of these appeared in local or company newspapers. The idea for this novel came to him when he was at college and a brief outline was written by the time he was twenty. The level of productivity over the subsequent forty years was only slightly ahead of that shown by Zimbabwean industry under Mugabe's rule. The conversion of twenty pages of hand-written notes into this novel took about a year. Subsequently sitting on my butt thinking about what to do with it took about the same time. Here it is.