One flew over the pigeon’s nest
A WombleWorld Tribute to Dave Reddington
Craig Cope has spoken. The official tribute to Dave Reddington has been issued, and it covers what an official tribute should cover.
A really exciting opportunity. A huge role since he came in. Support for Johnnie, Terry, and Bayzo with what we’ve managed to deliver on the pitch. Really, really grateful.
Lovely. Heartfelt. Entirely incomplete.
Because there is another Dave Reddington. The Dave Reddington who never makes the matchday programme. The Dave Reddington whose work happens before kick-off, after the final whistle, and almost entirely off-camera. The Dave Reddington who, frankly, deserves a separate tribute. WombleWorld is, by self-appointment, the publication to provide it.
We will not be discussing his football contributions. Those have been covered. We are here for the rest.
The pigeons
Plough Lane has a professional pigeon population (PPP). We are not going to dwell on how we know this. We are going to dwell on what Dave has done with it.
Sources close to the situation describe an intensive, eighteen-month project of selective colour-breeding, aerial training, and loft maintenance, conducted entirely outside his football remit. Most pigeon fanciers take decades.
John Bender, the 1994 World Cup Champion in roller pigeon competition, spent his entire career getting there. Dave, working around an EFL fixture list and limited parking, took considerably less.
The Plough Lane roller pigeons are now performing aerial rotations in group unison with a duration and style that would not have looked out of place at that 1994 World Cup.
This is not a sentence we expected to write. It is, nonetheless, the sentence.
The lofts are immaculate. Strict feeding routine, twice daily, ten-minute increments. Confinement schedules of four to six days depending on the birds’ age. After confinement, slowly let free for flight and training periods, all of which were meticulously logged.
That was Dave. None of that is in the official tribute.
The other achievements we feel obliged to mention
We have been doing some research. By “research” we mean reading the internet. By “reading the internet” we mean confusing Dave with several other people who have won awards in adjacent fields. We see no reason to correct this.
It is our understanding that Dave can conduct training sessions in five languages: English, French, German, Swedish, and Finnish. We have only ever heard him do it in one. We assume the others are held in reserve.
He was, we believe, awarded a medal by the late Queen in the 2017 New Year’s Honours list. We cannot find confirmation for this on the internet, but we cannot find a denial either. This is good enough for WombleWorld.
He has also, depending on which tab you have open, written a 288-page full-colour study-guide on housing, raising, feeding, breeding, and flying pigeons. The book includes contributions from a pigeon scientist and a roller historian. We have not read it. We have, however, taken its existence as established. And who even knew there was a career as a pigeon scientist. They didn’t tell us that at career day.
What JJ said
Nothing on the record. However, Johnnie is understood to be considering a PowerPoint presentation for Craig requesting that the £18.89 of budget allocated to pigeon feed can be used towards Dave’s replacement.
Closing thoughts
Dave: thank you. For the football, which, as we have discussed, we have not discussed and will not discuss. For the rest, which we have, and which is most of it.
Plough Lane is a building. Dave is one of the people who made it feel like somewhere a club could actually function. That is a harder thing to do than it sounds, and it is a thing that almost never gets credited, because by the time you notice it, the person doing it has usually gone.
The exciting opportunity is fully deserved. The next place will be lucky. We will not be naming it, on the grounds that we have not been told.
WombleWorld
Ashley Bayes has lit a sage-and-San-Miguel candle in Dave’s honour. The pigeons have circled the loft three times and returned, awaiting a new trainer.