After a slight famine up front which had seen the team score only five goals in their last five outings (three of those in one game), South's near full-strength forward line made best use of the extra space granted them by a porous March defence to register their biggest margin of victory since early October.

South made the ideal start when, after several good cross-field moves, Chris Baker picked out an advancing Matt Readman (see later!), whose neat pass to Lukas Snetler set up the perfect feed for Mark Pears to find an angle past the March keeper with barely two minutes played. The score could easily have been doubled a minute later when Russell Johnson, benefiting from Pears' aggression in the left corner, unselfish­ly opted to pass rather than shoot but saw the ball slide past Keith Hewitt's stick on the overlap.

March soon gave notice of their presence, however, when firing just wide of Steve Parker's goal on a reverse and there were some marking issues outside the D before Rob Garrett charged down a strike on March's first penalty corner. With the hosts fav­ouring the counter-attacking long-ball tactic, South soon found that conceding possession in midfield was not a great idea and concentrated on retention and distr­ibution. Baker, James Cobbe and Snetler were all assiduous in this respect and they were helped by the excellent positional sense of debutant Graham McCulloch, who ran intelligently to make himself available throughout. Swift movement across the top of the circle allowed him a fair shot which drew a good pad save from the home keeper, who then covered on his post to keep out an effort from Pears on the rebound.

March hit back, manoeuvring a ball from their right across to the far post, where Parker dived full length to block with stick and gloves before Cobbe unobtrusively accompanied the ball to safety. The hosts repeatedly tried to bang the ball into the D for a possible deflection but South's ability to stop it stone dead and whisk it out smartly tended to close down the attacking threat as well as give opportunities to the pacy trio of Johnson, Garrett and Hewitt for counter-insurgency. From one such breakdown, Hewitt's carefully disguised aerial (the one that doesn't leave the ground) found Johnson, who accelerated confidently to outpace a defender before cleverly drawing the keeper out of position and firing home from a narrow angle.

South continued to dominate overall, though Ron Oren had to be uncompromising at the back to ward off some unwanted attentions and Hewitt made a renewed bid for the Australian skeleton bob team at the Winter Olympics with a full-length head-first dive across his own D. With Garrett dropping back to hoover up the high forwards and Readman in top form with his interceptions, March were starved of the ball and Hew­itt, Johnson and Snetler all went close to scoring. The home keeper made a good save to thwart Baker's flick from a Hewitt slipped short but March were unable to resist for long as Hewitt converted a Pears cross from the left with a lifter which glanced off the blocker on the way in. The irrepressible Pears, put away by Oren and Garrett, then made it 4-0 when he mugged a defender and stuffed away his own rebound when a clearance failed to materialise.

March persisted with the route one strategy, which nearly bore fruit as a striker broke free on the edge of the D and fired goalwards, but Parker was right on top of him to absorb the energy and deflect the shot away. Further pressure on the beleaguered March rearguard yielded a dangerous cross from Hewitt which was sticked away with two men waiting on the far post and shots from Baker and McCulloch which were stopped. Shortly afterwards, Johnson again made the most of a vacant tract on the right and, seeing a yawning gap at the edge of the D, Readman - spurred on by the altruistic urgings of his vice-captain - stepped up to the play, received the squared pass and coolly picked his spot as to the manner born. This aesthetically satisfying move, decorated by its consummate finish, put South ahead by five but March heads did not drop and, in addition to Parker kicking out, Cobbe, solidly, Hewitt, with a fine reverse tackle, and Oren, bravely getting in the way of a boomer, all had to put them­selves on the line. After this onslaught, March finally managed to reduce the deficit shortly before the break when a fiercely-struck, dipping short corner thudded in just below the top of the backboard.

Seemingly unfazed by the scoreline, the home team persisted with their tactics and, though struggling to cope with the pace of South's strike force, they did not fold. Snetler's reverse earned a rebound chance which was not accepted and the keeper was again alert in denying the same player after a fast run and cross from Johnson had once more exposed the defence. Johnson himself nearly scored from a batted shot that was just scrambled away from the post, while McCulloch unluckily had a goal disallowed. Yet at the same time, Garrett and Snetler had to work hard in defence, Garrett blocking a crisp shot and then intercepting a hit in before Snetler pumped out to the wings. Parker, too, needed all his speed to close down a March attacker at top D, resoundingly blocking the daylight with a sliding dive which saw the strike cannon into the pads.

The spirit of fair play was shown to be alive and well when, after some generous or lenient umpiring depending on your point of view, a March player graciously apolo­gised to Pears for an over-manly challenge but Pears, whilst equally graciously acc­epting the apology, exacted revenge a minute later when sweeping a slipped short high into the top corner for his tenth goal of the league season after Snetler had been unceremoniously hacked down. The five-goal cushion did not last long, however, as South were penalised for knocking the ball away and, in the ensuing hiatus caused by a 10-yard gain and a doubtfully lifted free hit, entanglement occurred near the visit­ors' penalty spot, allowing a waiting forward to poach a daft goal.

Thus emboldened, March won a trio of penalty corners, Parker coming to the rescue on the first, with two ground-level saves after a horribly topped strike had led to a quagmire of bodies, and the third, when an artful injection to an unsuspected angle gave the attacker a direct chance which was elegantly diverted away. Snetler then had an entertaining shoulder-to-shoulder battle with his marker all the way up the left touchline - Snetler chivvying the ball with him throughout - while Readman brought down a lifted hit (of which there an increasing number that should really have been penalised) with all the skill of a lacrosse player. March kept tanking forward, how­ever, and brought the score back to 6-3 when a cross from the right disappeared into a central knot of players of both sides and eventually emerged into the back of the South goal.

With 12 minutes still to go, you could sense March were beginning to think the unth­inkable and it was a good thing their sixth short, a decent flick, was deflected out of harm's way. Resisting the temptation to get headlessly sucked into the vortex, South re-established control as Readman saved a turnover and Baker calmly distr­ibuted to Snetler. McCulloch was still making himself prominent, showing some pleasing right-time right-place attributes, and Hewitt too had plenty of energy left, accelerating over short distances to gain ground. A good strike from him at South's fourth short was well saved on the deck, while both Pears and McCulloch had efforts kicked away. Snetler almost swung himself off his feet with an air shot owing to slight misalign­ment of the feet but redeemed himself with a nifty run up the left before Johnson tracked back swiftly to rescue a deflected through ball and, finally, Garrett twice more tor­mented the March defence by whirring silently up the middle until last-ditch inter­ventions halted him.

The 6-3 scoreline perhaps flattered March a little, although they creditably never let the early large margin overawe them, and it was a moot point whether South had subconsciously relaxed a little when the general mirth surrounding a March player who took a ball firmly amidships when attempting to control an aerial from one of his own team-mates temporarily seemed to take a bit of the sting out of the game shortly after half-time.

Be that as it may, South can be very pleased with their performance up front, with all the forwards (and even some others!) showing the pace and smoothness they can gen­erate given room to manoeuvre. Praise is also due to the back division, who made light of sundry absences and stood up well to the traditionally robust chall­enge offered by the hosts. Defeats for Wisbech and City of Peterborough and a draw for Rutland over the week­end all worked in South's favour and they now regain second spot be­hind leaders Spalding, next week's visitors. Rumours that Sky are diverting their hockey coverage from the Champions' Trophy in Melbourne to this substantially more exciting and important top-of-the-table clash at Coldham's Common appear a touch exaggerated at the moment but watch this space.