South 3rds endured a frustrating afternoon at Long Road as we were held to a 1-1 draw by Long Sutton 3rds.

Our slow start was back after last week’s improvement as it took 5-10 minutes to get into our stride, but once everyone was up to speed and comfortable we had our best spell of the game. This included the opening goal, an end-to-end move that start with Jan on our own 23, included a fifty metre run by Dom to get to the byline and ended with Rob deflecting Paul’s shot past the visitors' keeper. Unlike against St Ives, everyone agreed that Rob had touched this one.

It was probably important that he did, because we quickly found out that the Sutton keeper was either an exceptional practitioner of the art, or was having a day of days. Three times we seemingly had a shot past him and in to double the advantage (Rob on a rebound, Chris with a deflection and, um, somebody else). Each time Rob was already audible celebrating the second goal. And on each occasion a leg or arm appeared from nowhere to block the shot away. Isn’t doing the same thing again and again and failing to learn from it one of the signs of madness? Anyway...

A one goal lead is always precarious, and encouraging for the team behind. Long Sutton certainly acted that way as they took command after the break, forcing a string of short corners. One of these found its way home via a mishit slap-sweep, but the umpires were quickly consulting on whether it was a legal shot, and ruled it out for having crossed the line above the height of the backboard. It actually hit the backboard, but they decided it did so by dipping after crossing the line, a tight but probably accurate call.

However this was a brief reprieve as only a couple of minutes later Sutton beat Jason with a neat deflection on a ball cracked in from outside the circle. We were unhappy about this as well, possibly with justification (the Sutton skipper admitted as much after the game), but couldn’t really expect to have two opposition strikes ruled out in quick succession. And, to be blunt, Long Sutton’s second half display had deserved a goal.

We tried to come again after that, without ever looking likely to get back into the lead. So we had to settle for a point from a game that would have been dead and buried after twenty-five minutes against a less inspired goalkeeper. What goes around, comes around, I guess.