After scoring the winner in last week’s nail-biting derby win against City, skipper Graham McCulloch’s target this week was to put to bed an unfortunate loss to Ely last season which had caused sleepless nights for several months. A good crowd was there to watch, although many of them had turned up 90 minutes too early and were instead disappointed at having to watch City Men’s 1 in the National League Conference. Once that warm-up event was out of the way (and Finn had found a stick) we were into the main event and South, playing in yellow after Ely turned up without their away strip were straight out of the blocks and onto the attack.

The midfield of Hawkes, Johnson, Pearson and Chalk were dominant and provided plenty of action for the pace of McCulloch, Claes and Haslop. Driving forward positively, South forced a penalty corner after about 10 minutes and played the classic left slip then back to injector for McCulloch to do what he does best - get a fine touch and deflect it into the goal (I’m sure that there are other things that McCulloch does well but surely nothing as well as this).

At this point it looked as if South were cruising to an easy victory and they continued to carve out chances but the Ely keeper was on good form, keeping out those shots that were on target, and South were rather profligate when in front of goal. Going into half time just 1-0 ahead, South were satisfied with the performance but frustrated that they had not manage to convert more of their chances.

The second half continued in much the same vein with most of the play in the Ely half but no more goals forthcoming. As the game went on, South’s inability to finish meant that things became very nervous with Ely well aware that they could nick a point with just one good attack. They began to press forward more assertively and were often finding a spare man in midfield, although South’s midfield were not quite sure who’s man it was. However, the defence of Graveling, Readman, Wych and Parsot were in fine form, snuffing out most of the attacks with some fine interceptions and tackles, with good interplay around the back. On the odd occasion that Ely did get a shot on goal Parker was more than a match for it, in particular making one superb stick save low down to his right.

The end result of 1-0 did not reflect South’s dominance of possession, but at least McCulloch will be able to sleep easy now …… although we do have the small matter of the M1 v M2 match next Saturday.