The goalless scoreline may suggest this was a dull game, but the 20+ spectators that witnessed this epic moment in the history of Div 3NW hockey will all disagree. In fact I don't think I've played in front of a larger crowd before; perhaps I never will again! It was so entertaining even the local youths who planned on kicking a football around the adjoining field ended up watching the game, pressed up against the wrong side of the fence like goldfish at feeding time.

St Neots is really not that far from Cambridge, in fact it's so close many of the South players arrived much earlier than planned, far too early to start a warm up. Time needed to be wasted. One of us decided to smash two balls over the fence and go for a one mile round trip to retrieve the balls (Nick). Another decided to spend far too long in the changing rooms before the game (Oli). Others appreciated a very roomy dug out, equipped with comfy wooden benches and Perspex rain covers, a luxury not yet afforded us at our new Long Road home.

Captain Mark Williams was injured/had a poorly baby calf or something (I get confused with all the midweek emails) but made sure he lived up to his excellent reputation by coming to watch and managing things from the touch line (note my pathetic attempt to keep my place in the 1st team). Before the game he told me to use my not-so-secret weapon of throwing a massive aerial ball to push back the opponents. This was music to my ears as I had been practising aerials all week and when the game started I was eager to get hold of the ball and launch one at the St Neots' goalie from the top of our D.

Playing in defence doesn't afford me the luxury of using my other not-so-secret weapon of the Spinny Thing, which I can now do both clockwise and anti-clockwise very efficiently. This is mainly because of the stick that my brother bought me for my birthday which is available to all members of the public.

Anyway, after a few minutes I got hold of the ball. I stopped it, realising this was my moment to impress my captain and scare St Neots 1s. I had also been working out in the gym all week for this moment so I knew it was going to go far. I launched the ball with everything I had in me. It flew off my stick heading towards the clouds, everyone watched in silence. It then strangely caught a gust of wind, proceeded out of the ground and disappeared over an oak tree into the woods. It was amazing, a personal best, but it didn't have the desired affect on my captain or the other team and was met with people laughing.

Anyway, enough of me. What a game this was! St Neots have a couple of strong additions to their team for this season and are above us in the league. The pressure was relentless throughout the 70 minutes. Sometimes the play was very physical with sweeper Chris Graveling being bundled over early on. The traditional 4-4-2 formation was utilised by the captain and the tactic of hitting them on the break was the option chosen for this game. We had a couple of good chances in the first half with John Pawson narrowly missing.

The team was working hard. We were giving the ball away with some poor passes which didn't help but there were spells of good composed hockey. Especially of note were Dave and Nick down the left. Chris P was running as much as always and everyone was working hard, helping the defence out. The marking by the South players was very good and it's hard to remember many clear chances St Neots had in open play. The goalkeeping master class of Steve Parker was on display, cancelling out any attackers that slipped the defence.

St Neots must have had more than 15+ short corners, however South kept their nerve and worked tirelessly, putting their bodies on the line to stop the ball going in. Jack Chalk must have felt like he was doing the beep test, having to run out to stop the striker. What Steve didn't stop, the post did on 2 or 3 occasions. Steve was on fire!

The best chance South had was with a minute to go, when JT, who like everyone had a solid game, picked the ball up on the half way line, ran down the right wing and hit a top class cross to the back post only for Simon Ta to be denied his speciality back post tap in by a nick of the ball from a defender's stick.

All in all, a brilliant and tense game and a draw that felt like a win.