7 (SEVEN) goals conceded from short corners! You would think that we were playing against Sohail Abbas or something. But this wasn’t one player unstoppably drag-flicking, it was simply sharp, accurate movement of the ball and unflustered finishing.

In the aftermath there were those on our side disinclined to count the set-piece goals, somehow viewing them as "not cricket" and arguing that the open-play score of 3-0 was more reflective of the general play and quite respectable for a bottom vs top clash.

This view somewhat ignores i) that shorts are a part of the game and an increasingly key one as you move up the leagues, ii) once Spalding worked out that their routines were working nearly at will they were constantly looking to upgrade (again a theme as one moves up the ladder, and a mindset that we sometimes lack), and iii) you can only win a short if you get the ball into the opposition's circle; Spalding won double figures and made loads of circle penetrations.

Paul had it right. They played the game simply, shifting the ball around to work gaps in our defence rather than relying on winning one-on-ones. It was as a team rather than as individuals that they were streets ahead of us.

The match had started so promisingly as well. After some early sparring, and one short defended (we didn’t realise at the time that this was a pretty noteworthy event), we moved upfield and won our first short of the morning, much to the displeasure of the Spalding rearguard. The set piece crew went for ‘old reliable’. It wasn’t exactly as drawn up, Dave’s first attempt to square the ball being blocked but it fell back to him, a jink giving him space to pick out JT to the back post, who turned into an unguarded net.

Going behind goaded the Spalding player who had been most vociferous in his complaints about the award of the short to re-hash them, and he was called over by the Ump for a second talking-to in quick succession. This time it was accompanied by a reach for the pocket. Yellow? No, green. But it showed that Spalding were irritated by going behind and if we could hold on to our lead for a period they might, just might, get rattled.

This theory will have to remain forever untested as our lead lasted little more than two minutes, with Spalding’s equaliser coming from their first short conversion of the afternoon (left slip, hard hit, defensive statues). Within a minute of drawing level, our visitors were ahead with an open play goal, finished very accurately on the reverse stick. Good from their perspective, but very soft defensively, with a number of the backline making awful decisions to gift the space for the opportunity. Two more shorts lead to two more goals to put Spalding 4-1 up by midway through the first half, and the match over as a contest.

For the record, the rest of the match went like this;
1-5: Short
HT
1-6: Open play
1-7: Open play
1-8: Short
1-9: Short
2-9: Short
2-10: Short

Our second goal came from a very similar routine to our first, with Ali this time providing the square pass to JT to finish. The goal came from our second (and final) short of the afternoon, so conversion ratio was one stat we were ahead on, with 100% to Spalding’s ~60% [our twitter says 7 from 10, I can remember at least four unconverted and maybe five, so 7 from 12 is more my guess]. Ratio’s rather than absolute numbers are where it’s at.

But even then Spalding were not content to let us have the last say, adding a tenth for double figures in the dying minutes. There will be two divisions between these teams next season. This game showed why.