Halfway through the season and with 4 points to show for our efforts, this seemed as good a time as any to try and change things around a bit. So we tried out the novelty of playing 4-3-3 and - shock, horror - have a sub. In fact, it would've been two subs, with a certain Tom (of the South-ish persuasion) hadn't come down with the mother of all coughs, for commonly known as manflu.

Guess what - it actually worked for us, at least for about 40 / 50 minutes. With a solid midfield and lots of attackers, there was every opportunity to put Ely's backline under some decent pressure. Admittedly, Ely had their breaks into our half, but the defence comfortably soaked up their pressure (ably helped by some of Ely's strikes going just off the post). More importantly, we had plenty of play in their half with several forays into the D; yet again, though, we lacked composure in the final third to get the goal.

It felt to our visitor from the M3s to break the deadlock, muscling his way past a couple of defenders to flick the ball gently into the net. Calls of "umpire, how long left?" abounded, suggesting we went into defend-the-lead mode (the answer "20 minutes" didn't quite help). And that was our downfall - instead of building on our momentum and pressing Ely harder we took our foot of the gas and allowed them to get into the game. Ely found an equaliser, our heads dropped, legs started to tire, a couple of unlucky shorts - all of a sudden, the final whistle went and we'd lost 3-1.

There are lots of good things to take from this game. 4-3-3 really suited us. There were plenty of times we strung together lovely passes, getting from one end of the pitch to the other in three or four touches. And most importantly - we played good hockey from the first whistle in both halves. We just need to stay confident and keep our heads up and the results will come. We'll do the M2s special yet of coming back strong in the second half of the season!