Having been voted as Lemon for the third time this season (eleven times in total in six seasons), I'd like to take this opportunity 'platform' to tell you about an addiction that I suffer from…

My addiction to the well-known game, Candy Crush Saga.

In mid-2011 a work mate of mine said to me, "You should have a look at that Candy Crush Saga, mate. It's brilliant." I therefore hastily whipped out the iPhone 4 (or whatever antique phone I had back then) and downloaded the computer game app that I estimate I have spent eight thousand five hundred hours on over the past five years, playing when I get a ‘spare moment’ in an already hectic life. I have divided 8,500 hours by 24 to work out the amount of days this is and it almost totals a whole year; yes, a whole year playing that stupid game over the past five years (!!) so I have put a line all the way through this sentence as that is one scary stat! This calculation was based on each level taking on average fifteen minutes to complete and I am currently on level 2268 (yep, level 2268! If there is anyone out there reading this who is beyond this level then I'd like them to get in touch), which is two levels away from the top of the game. However, every Wednesday at about 11am fifteen new levels are added to the game. Those fifteen levels are called 'chapters' and there are one hundred and fifty-one of those: the current one is ‘Smiley Seas’?!?!

I know there are worst things to be addicted to; for example, crystal meth, gambling, bird watching (although I regularly keep my bird feeders topped up in the garden, so I fear this may be an addiction waiting to surface later on in life) and stamp collecting, etc. However I would not recommend this seemingly innocent way of occupying a few hours minutes of your day. I am worried that I am going to get arthritis in my right thumb, poor peripheral vision and a hunched over Neanderthal-sort-of posture due to excessive playing of this pointless waste of my time.

*if you are a keen Candycrusher (I like that! Perhaps that will find its way into the dictionary one day? But probably not as it's just two words joined together), here's a tip to get you more lives without having to wait or pay for them; when you run out of lives simply go to your device's settings ~General/~Date and Time, unclick 'Set automatically' and wind the time on by two hours. When you re-open the Candy Crush app you will find you have five new lives. Just remember to reset your time as this can cause problems the next morning when your alarm doesn't go off. My iPhone is currently telling me it's 4am on Wednesday 8th February!

I have tried many ways to tackle my addiction. I have tried playing other computer games like 'Farming Simulator' (too boring – it’s like Grand Theft Auto without guns or stealing stuff) and the old classic, Mortal Kombat (too violent to play in front of the dogs). I've even started using my iPhone for other stuff like phoning people and having a chat or that WhatsApp thingy, but I feel bad about wasting other people's time. Surfing the web only entertains me for short periods. This week I looked at the Cambridge City Hockey Club website and found out that over at their club they 'look after your spiritual needs' (whatever that looks like during a game of hockey, I don't know). However I can't help myself, I just end up succumbing to my addiction and playing that stupid game. A simple solution would be to delete the app from my phone but, like a left arm or something else that is significant, I can't face losing the game from my life. So I will keep working on battling this problem I have. If anyone else out there suffers from this then please get in touch and we can work things out!

Anyway, the above is hardly newsworthy and I had better get on with the details on how the match went.

Having sorted out the complexities of getting thirteen people up to the wilderness of north Norfolk, we arrived in good time (eleven of us: Tom and Spikey were running late due to Mike getting delayed on his train journey from London as someone had jumped on the tracks for some reason) to have a really pumped and energetic warm up on what appeared to be a really good pitch. The opposition didn't look quite so energetic. However, I think you should never judge a team on how they look before the match begins. The first five minutes saw South start well with some good chances, of which one was converted by the Wizard that is Ollie Lamming. Then, against the run of play, one of the Dereham forwards made a run into the D and from the base line passed it back towards the PF spot (yes, that's away from the goal) only for me to intercept the ball and knock it out of play over the base line (between the goal posts) thinking that we only conceded a long corner from this as everyone knows that own goals were gotten rid of years ago. To my astonishment a goal was awarded to Dereham, which really is bad knowledge on my part as the rule clearly states (having read the rules in the club house afterwards) that there only needs to be an attacker to touch the ball in the D and the goal stands and will be awarded to that attacker rather than the defender. My team mates have not let me forget this since and I have been having the expected nightmares following such an incident that I usually suffer.

Dereham then scored a drag flick of sorts from a short corner, only for South to quickly respond with a further two goals to make it three-three at half time (I think, but I was still dwelling on scoring/not scoring an own goal and whether my stats on our website would drop down to -1 goals)

The second half was not as enjoyable as the first half. It became more and more frustrating, the umpires were getting an earful, passes were deteriorating and composure was being lost. We conceded two further goals and were 5-3 down with ten minutes to play. The Wizard, who had already scored a hat trick from some great positioning and great assists (I think mainly from Chris) scored a fourth from a short corner. However, the Dereham bus was parked and South ran out of time to get an equaliser in what was an rare disappointing game. The ‘drop zone’ that consists of the six teams at the bottom of Division 2N (of which four go down) is becoming tighter and South will have to work hard at training to bond as a team and sort out their problems in this season, which has been cursed with injury and absences that we didn’t suffer in the previous year.

I have faith that we will survive this league, and certainly a lot more faith than I have in overcoming my addiction that I detailed in the first part of this report…