Change, I’m told, is a constant. Death and taxes also. It seems a fourth to add to that list is the Cooper Clanger.

I was hoping that a summer break might have hit the reset button but alas, it appears not. Mishaps continue to stalk me across the astro, haunting my distribution and whispering in the ear of my tackle. That the lemon vote was not unanimous was largely because the new lads were, for the most part, too new to vote for the captain. Jason had arrived at 9am in an early shout for a debut award, and Nightingale put in a double whammy of a warm-up proposal (yours truly is still considering his options) and a left-sided swish and a mish, but they didn’t come close.

In fairness to Adam and after the fiasco with his ring, he did open the scoring. We’d come close a couple of times before our left half (as he then was) got bored and decided to gangle upfield to swat home. Six out of ten.

With control of the midfield at this point, chances continued to arrive. Polge, who was disappointing throughout, managed to poke in his first for the Club. He was later to miss a host of even more presentable chances before finally scoring our third, shortly after half time. Before that lucky break for the permanently hamstrung youngster, we’d managed to donate a goal of their own to the visitors, just to keep the crowd (Will’s dad and Mrs Wizard) interested. I don’t know what Douglas was thinking, calmly rolling the ball across to my open stick. It must have been because he hasn’t played with us much and didn’t know that this spelled danger. The big size 11s did the rest and the resultant shortie was predictably thwacked home.

The second period followed a similar pattern to the first, with early dominance giving way to a staccato affair in which slick passing fought for attention with, oh look, a bee.

A reverse stick looper crept over George’s head before a last minute stroke crept inside the left post to leave a bemused Stortford side wondering how they should celebrate a draw that had seemed unlikely for much of the afternoon. Little did they know that their late success had been deemed inevitable by our manager but ten minutes hence.