A fun game, played in a great spirit, showed the health of the club with two evenly matched teams battling it out for the honour of victory. It was decided eventually by the best player on the park, James Mathews, netting four times to help Howard's Heroes to a 6-4 win over Greaves's Gang.

The GGs had the better of the first half with goals from Stu Creed, a rasper straight from a short corner; Shahbaz Ali, positioned ideally five yards out to turn a Peter Creed cross into the net from two yards; and John Greaves, controlling the ball near the p-spot and turning to fire it past the onrushing keeper. The HHs managed to get two back to give them hope.

Which turned to reality in the second half, with that man Matthews aided by his henchmen Williamson, Dookun, Dijkstra and Harvey, grabbing a few more goals…we lost count…to take the game out of reach of the Gang. This gave the Heroes the confidence to control the midfield and pass the ball around increasingly well, often out of reach of opponents who nevertheless kept trying and put some lovely passing moves of their own together. The Gang did have enough chances of their own to get back on a par but masterful keeper Matt S-Gower made great saves from Gang leader Greaves (twice) and Shahbaz, going for his hat-trick, but it was not to be.

Shahbaz did clinch the Man of the Match award with a scorching drag flick above the despairing keeper from another short corner but it was not enough to prevent the Heroes' triumph.

It was great to see a combination of youngsters, newcomers, others returning to the game and the usual smattering of the quite-frankly-should-know-better-than-to-be-running-around-an-astroturf-at-their-age, a.k.a. "experienced exponents of the dark arts", all enjoying a hard fought well-umpired match.