"Uh oh. What’s this? A game against a team lurking down in the bowels of the table? With only one point so far this year and that, as a consequence, we really should be expecting to beat?"

South’s Mens' 2^nd XI are now so afraid of banana skins you won’t even get them down the fruit aisle at Waitrose. Our record against the teams at the top of Div 4 is respectable. Good, even. Results against the lesser mortals have, however, been abject.

I took the view that lying to the lads was the way forward. "This St Ives side is flying high", I claimed (safe in the knowledge that no-one else in the M2s' squad actually looks at the league website). "We’ll need to be right on the money from the first whistle." "Welcome to the Grind".

Although we had to ride a bit of pressure in the initial couple of minutes, we soon darted up the other end to open the scoring. All in all, we managed to put away four in the first half, with Oven whacking in two and Nelson providing the hammered counter-point to Shin’s gossamer touch.

With the game now over as a contest, the second period was something of a non-event. There was time for the visitors to peg one back before a slow-mo lunge at the back stick saw Dunn get his first goal for the team. Russell and Mann, as befitting men of their advanced years, took every opportunity to take a lie down in mid-pitch. Whilst they enjoyed forty winks, Lamming, Mario and Spikey were playing their own new game – "How many times can we send the ball across the goal-line from one side to the other without actually scoring?" They were, in fairness, very good at it, but those of us at the back were getting a little cold by this point. Mercifully, the game soon ended and we could investigate the mulled wine kindly arranged by Emma and Lou C. Excellent work, girls! The half-time oranges went largely untouched though, sorry, with most people seemingly more focussed on output than intake.