The lead-up to this match resembled a rather naff reality TV show, with an email from this skipper at the start of the week tantalizingly hinting at some tough selection decisions and limited spaces on the squad for Saturday's match. We collectively held our breath and crossed our fingers and silently mouthed the word "Average" to ourselves.

Well, Saturday eventually came and we assembled at Fortress Long Road. Relief was evident on many a face as Average Aston rocked up in khakis, a hoodie and a beanie. Phew - he was just going to be watching. The captain had seen sense and made the right call.

Relief turned to dismay five minutes from push-back as Average stripped off his 'urban chic' attire to reveal his hockey kit. The blood drained from my face. It was going to be another one of those days!

South bravely battled past this set-back though and were barely five minutes into the match before Chris P struck South's first short-corner crashing past the keeper for the opening goal.

A few minutes later a move straight out of Colin's 'diagonal running' training drills tore through the Louth defence, with Craig passing the ball into the empty goal with the keeper stranded.

The rest of the first half was more of the same, with some slick link-up play from Stu, Mark and Jim to the forwards. But it was all about Chris P and Craig, combining perfectly to score another goal each. Consistently training and playing together looked to be really paying off.

Half time saw a concise summary by Jim of what we needed to do in the second half, followed by twelve other enthusiastic and orthogonal opinions from everyone else!

With six recognised defenders (and Average) playing, South were looking solid at the back with Paresh, Colin and Tom acting as the launch-pad for each South attack. Bhav, Average and Chris G were keeping the width and shutting down any attacking runs from Louth.

A special WOM ('Woman of the Match') vote went to Naomi for braving the freezing temperatures to watch Jason in goal - in a match we won 9-0 (actually he did make some good saves so not a total waste!).

Anyway, how do you remember nine goals?! Um....there was a trade-mark short-corner goal from Graham (easy to remember!), a trade-Mark goal from Williams (see what I did there?) following another flowing move down the left between Jim and Craig, and one for Jim himself.

Chris P then secured his hat-trick and MOM votes by robbing Mark to stick home South's only scrappy goal. To be fair it worked out for the best as we all got to enjoy Chris's hat-trick jug after the match.

The low point for South in an otherwise sublime second half came when Mark attempted to kick a stray rugby ball back over fence. The less said about this the better. At least he's good at hockey.

With all the goal scoring going on, Chris G latched onto a ball slipped behind the Louth defence and, faced with a one-on-one with the keeper.... let his defensive reflexes kick in and pushed the ball away from the goal. Fortunately it ran straight to Graham who (for once) struck a sweet reverse-stick shot past the stranded keeper and the defenders on the line, prompting one particular spectator to exclaim, "That was so good I thought it was Craig!" *sigh* :-/

All in all an excellent bounce-back from the disappointment of last week, further buoyed by news that evening that Ely had only managed a draw at St Neots. Next week's match against the Uni will be another biggie!