New Year's resolution: Write match reports faster… and send them to the captain ideally in the same year.

A game in the new year wouldn’t be right without some more new players for the 2s... Ahmed (who had previously played a friendly in pre-season for the 3s), James D (appeared over Christmas, claiming wooden hamstrings) and a debut for Coops in goal (oh wait, he's done that before).

Games at Newmarket, for some reason, are always freezing. Yet I live in the town and it's not that cold - it's a bit baffling, maybe the pitch is in an odd place. It gets dark pretty fast there too. We weren't sure what to expect when the opposition looked like it included a lot of youngsters. Great… we needed a run around for our first game back in the new year. Did anyone do any kind of training between the last game and this one?

From the first whistle it seemed like we hadn't eaten too much turkey, as we were soon back in our stride, picking up from our last game with great passing, movement and pace (in places). Maybe the Louis Van Gaal, three month period to adapt to a new formation has finally passed, or maybe it's just having a group of players week in, week out! Who knows.

There were a couple of chances at each end before Ahmed opened the scoring from close in. This was soon followed by a second from Dom, deflecting past the keeper from under his nose. Two almost became three when… get this... we almost scored from a short, Walshy's strike saved by the keeper and the rebound going to Dom who put it just wide. The third came from a quick counter attack following some great pressure to win the ball back, Ahmed being put in for his second of the game.

At some point Newmarket scored, it might have been here, or later in the half, I couldn’t really see what happened. A fourth soon followed with some more slick passing ending when Russ squared for John for another close range goal. Why shoot from distance when you can pass it into an open net seemed to be the theme of the day. At this point and with everything going so well, James pulled up leaving us to finish the last ten minutes of the half with ten men.

A reshuffle at half time saw us deploy the hamstrung James in our new role - the "Jan, stay up top and don't run around much" position. We left him up on his own, to spend thirty-five minutes being teased with passes somewhere nearby, seeing if he wanted to do himself more damage.

More goals followed, Ahmed completed his hat-trick beating the keeper one-on-one having been put through by Dom, before… guess what… we scored from a short corner. Same as the earlier one with the ball this time being flicked in, only it was disallowed because the ball never left the D. This coming after a stop, strike, save, stop & flick…. Not to be deterred we scored the next one, Walshy flicking the ball along the floor into the bottom corner.

Newmarket scored a second when the defence (pretty bored by this point) just let them through. A charging Coops came roaring out of goal, attempting to keep warm, but ignored the ball as it went past.

A seventh for us followed when Dom was given space to turn in the D and smash a shot goalwards, finally connecting with a strike after half a season, earning himself lemon in the process (or was that for not turning up for my home town tea - or lying on the floor). Not to be out done by Jan, James rounded off the scoring with a final tap in to leave everyone pretty happy after a well tempered game. Just how friendlies should be.

If only we could do this in the league. A nice mid-afternoon trip to Wisbech will provide us with our first league test of the new year.