There was action aplenty when I arrived at Scott Reserve for the C1 Amateurs game between High Wycombe and former Sunday Football League club Thornlie. Fingers were pointing, there was pushing and screaming and accusations were flying.“Stop that.”“He did it first.”

“No I didn’t I was just playing.”

“You were both doing it, I saw you. Now stop it and play properly.”

The game hadn’t even started. All this action was in the playground. There were kids and mums and dads everywhere. Family atmosphere.

The scoreboard at Scott Reserve is right next to the clubrooms in among the crowd, not, as is usual, isolated on the other side of the ground. A young woman removed the score from the reserves game. I asked if she was the scoreboard attendant.

“No”, she said.

“Who does it?”

“Anyone,” she said.

When the main game started a man in club colours took over the job. It was David Sheedy, High Wycombe Football Club vice president and father of the young woman I’d spoken to earlier.

The young woman, Amye, was the scoreboard attendant but she hadn’t actually been fibbing to me. She is paid by the club but her contract stipulates two games a day only. Amye had run the board for the colts and reserves and then dad took over.

David and the committee were happy enough with the arrangement. “It’s one job we don’t have to do.” Except on days when Scott Reserve hosted three games. At the beginning of the second quarter David was off fixing up a little match crisis and a stand-in had taken his place. Such is the lot of the amateur footy club committee man.

The game was interesting and played in good spirit. The home team kicked the first three goals but Thornlie hit back to even the scores at quarter time. During the break a pre-schooler examined the scoreboard. “The scores are both the same,” he yelled. No numeracy problems there.

No problems for the home team after the first break either. High Wycombe bolted away to win by 90 points.

•Our interest in High Wycombe came from a post we found on the website WA Footy Forum in 2006 from High Wycombe player and poster Fitchu7: “…our ability to kick straight has basically lost us the previous three games and when we do kick straight we produce scoreboard pressure and even the toffees from cbc start to crumble.”

Les Everett