A trip up to Rutland is always a bit tricky and this one turned out to be disastrous. It all started badly when one of the cars managed to miss the one pitch in the league you could find with your eyes closed and didn’t get to pitch until a mere 20 minutes before push-back. Between lacking players and lacking urgency, South didn’t get their warm-up organised in time and started the game with cold limbs and fuzzy heads.

And boy, did it show. Rutland didn’t show much in skill, but South seemed to make a conscious effort to match them for it. Impartial sideline observers were seen to slit their wrists with boredom, when - somewhat against the run of play - a goal was scored. Unfortunately for South, it was the home side that scrambled the ball over the line to give them a 1-0 lead. And so it stayed for quite a while.

Second half and South resolved to up their game and show what they can do. True to their word, they did and pressed Rutland hard. In one of those attacks, Colin Troll managed to fire off a shot at goal from the narrowest of angles and miss is by such a margin that Laurens Brocken found himself with an easy tap-in at the far post. 1-1 and South were surging. For all of 3 minutes and then the team did a credible imitation of an undercooked soufflé and slumped into a rather unappetising shape. Although the visitors had most of the game for the rest of the half and created a buck-load of chances, finishing clearly wasn’t on the cards. On the other side of the pitch, Rutland got themselves one short corner and managed to bundle that into goal off Shahbaz’s pads. South kept trying and kept dominating the game outside the D; but they fell prey to panic in the last quarter - rather beautifully epitomised by Tom Anns’s annual shot on goal (and I use the word “goal” in the loosest possible sense) that nearly decapitated several players and the umpire (on the other side of the pitch).

In the end, the team had to concede defeat and leave Uppingham empty-ended. The anti-relegation campaign is not quite dead yet, but next week’s game against St Neots is now taking on epic proportions: in effect, South have one last chance to show that they actually deserve to stay in 3NW. Now is the time to find form and play a storming game to secure a place in the division for next year!