After The Thrills and spills of beating the Beach Boys of Alford last week, the 1sts were back in the Beautiful South for The Clash that everyone was anticipating - the Motley Crue from Newmarket.

The Snow Patrol confirmed that despite the good winter (or Bon Iver as the French would say*) extending through March, the pitch was good to play on. South were as usual very Keane to get playing but lacking in some organisational skills - some arriving at the pitch an hour early but having failed 2Pac a single hockey ball between them had nothing to do but stand around Counting Crows** until the others turned up.

South started with purpose and there was an Air of composure that had been missing in the other top-table match against Wisbech. Some surging play down the right inexplicably found the sweeper Graveling in the attacking D where he tapped the ball through to McCulloch who slotted home past the Newmarket keeper to give South an early lead. There would be no Levellers for Newmarket this time though as this was quickly followed up by a 2nd goal for South. Having established a New Order for attacking short corners, the Asian Gentleman stepped up and did what he does best, even making it look easy in the process. Why oh why did we only discover this at the end of the season?!

The Pendulum had definitely swung in South's favour. Newmarket now faced an uphill battle. The rest of the 1st half was a bit of a Blur. South maintained their discipline with The Calling for balls and general sharpness on the ball causing the Newmarket defence continued problems and some Tenacious D* defence by Wych, Parsot, Graveling and even Aston keeping the opposition at bay. Parker was Sublime in goal, and The Feeling was that this was South's game for the taking.

The Prodigy that is Claes, starting on the bench (entirely unrelated to his suspicious absence from the long-distance trip to Skeggy last week...) duly entered The Fray and soon made an impact. By this time Haslop had decided to Embrace the tactic of using up time by just bouncing the ball off the keeper while the seconds ticked away. Claes was having none of it though, clinically dispossessing Haslop, dragging the ball back and lifting it over the keeper's Elbow to make it 4-0.

South were starting to have Fun and The Doors of the Newmarket defence were beginning to creak. A Massive Attack down the right found the Asian Gentleman marauding forward with the D in his sights. Parsot fired in a trademark bullet of a diagonal cross which was finished off by McCulloch with a trademark deflection into the top corner that wouldn't have looked out of place in The National leagues. At the other end, Newmarket racked up a record number of short corners but couldn't convert any - most of them being described by their own defender as Garbage.

Graveling, Hawkes and Williams also inadvertently added to the fun-factor. First Hawkes managed to turn a straight forward passing opportunity into a squaerial in the One Direction we didn't need it - straight off the side-line. Then Graveling kicked in Newmarkets only goal, skilfully deflecting a wayward short corner strike back into the goal off The Shins just when it looked like it would be a clean sheet for South. Not to be outdone, Williams scored South's 5th goal with considerably more 'finesse' than was needed, selecting his sand-wedge to chip the most delicate of lobs over the floored keeper. The post-match theory is that the back-spinning ball must have then bounced off a stone which gave it enough momentum to creep over the line before a defender could reach it.

Much less fun was had by one of the Newmarket defenders who gained a couple of extra joints in his index finger after putting it in a stick sandwich as he tried to stop a McCulloch reverse-stick strike. A quick glance at The Kinks in his finger left No Doubt that it was well and truly broken. We wish him a speedy recovery!

Afterwards, dining on a tasty chicken curry flavoured with some (yup - you guessed it) Red Hot Chilli Peppers in the Oasis that is the Newmarket Working Men's Club, South could only Muse on the lack of Justice that sees them comprehensively beat a team that will almost certainly be promoted instead of them.

All in all a fantastic team effort with some great goals - Five for Fighting hard, exactly The Cure we needed for our confidence issues. In fact the only down-side to the whole thing was this horrendously lemon-worth match report that The Editors will surely reject...

* sorry - had to be done.
** and Doves
***No Eagles unfortunately.