South travelled to St Neots a troubled bunch, looking to continue where we left off last week in trying to send the 2s down by losing heavily to all their closest rivals. Morale in the camp was low, the twins had jumped ship for the IPL, Graveling had gone to the extreme lengths of bringing his family along to the game just to avoid giving Sir Puke-a-Lot a lift in his car, and McCulloch was looking very perturbed in the pre-match build up. Most simply assumed he was “on edge”, feeling his place in the side was under threat after the dreaded “vote of confidence” from the Cambridge South committee following a long goalscoring drought.

Not to worry, we would all be geed up by some fantastic words of inspiration from the captain. After last week’s positive pre-match message fell on deaf ears, Williams plumped for a more honest approach this time around. Firstly, the tactical details: South had scored three goals in their last four matches so to combat this, we would play with one less striker. Makes sense to me.

After a lot of waffling about nothing in particular, the finishing rallying cry was “Nobody wants to spend their Saturday afternoons in St Neots” and by God it worked. Within a minute of the opening, a short corner was won by Haslop and worked back to the taker. Even the man who can’t hit a barn door with a banjo couldn't miss from there and South were one-nil up and the goal drought was over!

Soon after, a free flowing South move found Mark Williams on the edge of the area. Although he looked “snookered” by the opposition defence, he found a yard of space and slotted a reverse stick finish under the keeper - the first goal I think he’s scored this season where he hasn't used his sand wedge. A third soon followed, where an excellent 10mph pass along the ground from Aston found McCulloch one-on-one with the last defender, where all he really had to do was meg him with an outrageous piece of skill and then deceive the keeper with a slight lifted finish into the far corner. Piss easy if you ask me.

St Neots got one back before half time with a good finish from a short and then the game got a tad bad tempered. South needn’t have let it get the better of them as we were playing some fantastic stuff on the break.

After half time, South came out the stronger and were soon 4-1 up. Laurie scored, although as he’s the only striker that nets more than once every blue moon I tend to forget his goals. So, from memory, Laurie picked the ball up two yards from his own goal and, unlike last week, managed to sell their striker with the dummy then beat all eleven opponents twice (stopping to give one guy grief who tried to hack him down) and reverse-stick-dragged into the far top corner.

This goal was then followed by two more, one from Pearson and one from McCulloch. The first from Pukie was nicked on the line from McCulloch’s deflection that was going in and then the second was slapped in baseball style from nowhere near the line from Pearson’s mishit strike from a short. This meant a hat trick for McCulloch, so at least we got a jug of beer out of our trip to the “hitholes” (Countdown conundrum here; re-arrange letters as appropriate), although why it had to be Carlsberg only Graham knows.

There was still time before the end for a tirade at Graveling for pointing out there were two number eights (they did look very similar so I do sympathise with you), as well as a St Neots goal, a shocking miss from Pearson and a *tackle of the season* from their defender when Aston was through on goal.

All in all, a job well done.