After City managed to find their eleventh man the match started off fairly evenly, with a few nervous passes from our defense (to their attackers!) Luckily for us, City’s attackers were coming back from injury-time out (dropped down from their M3s though!) - kudos to our defense. Overall, it was a solid performance from which South rightfully came out on top. City were very friendly, and everyone involved had a jolly time out playing hockey. But mainly us…because we won.

1-0

Our first goal comes within the opening five minutes of the game, with an audacious aerial from Toby ‘Doesn’t like to play on the left’ Watson to an overconfident Dom ‘This isn’t football’ Nelson, who taps it in mid-air into the goal. The keeper didn’t expect it, we didn’t expect it, and did Dom expect it? He alleges so, but we’ll say otherwise so that the M2s don’t bump him up to a higher team. On a similar note, Ash A is an awful player and he definitely shouldn’t be playing for the 1s/2s…

2-0

A frustrated City keep up their attacks, but mainly against the grain of play as we have a few more chances to convert. Finally the City defence breaks as Toby crosses the ball in to Nev (?) who takes a shot which bounces off the keeper. Ash ‘Two yards out’ Dookun is quick to pounce and collect the ball to flick it over the downed keeper from…two yards out.

HT

Probably a motivational talk by Nev and Matt ‘Where’s Ollie?’ Kern. Everyone seems intent on getting the cherry sweets from the Haribo packet though. Who wants the cola bottles?

2-1

After Alex ‘Look at how low my resting heart rate is on my fancy Fitbit’ Pashley takes a ball to the chest - causing his resting heart rate to increase to 110 bpm - the City attacker manages to break through and score a goal somehow.

3-1

Alex ‘Hey, mention in the match report that I did some running’ Larkinson runs down the wing and crosses it into Nev ‘Back post!’ Warren who takes a shot. Joe ‘Golden Balls’ Whittaker, taking a leaf out of Ash D’s book, pounces on the keeper’s saved rebound and puts it home over the fallen keeper.

4-1

Joe takes the ball on the halfway line and v-drags around the first player; he then manages to take it past another four players with a combination of 3D skills and feints before playing a one-two with Toby and finishing it off with a reverse tomahawk from the edge of the ‘D’ into the top corner of the goal. The crowd goes wild. Even City’s spectators start clapping in admiration. Hey, if I’m writing the match report, this is how it happened.

Other things that happened during/after the match (you’ll have to turn up to training to find out how they earned their nicknames - you’re welcome, Miles, for that plug!):

• Neil ‘Easy-peazy’ Sneade

• Chris ‘I can’t manage seconds of those yummy match teas’ Matson

• Ash ‘Nostalgia about the glory days of university’ Artman

• Matt ‘Park the bus’ Saint-Gower

• Alex ‘Belgium is the biggest distributor of vegetables didn’t you know?’ Baekelandt

Lemon/Man antics:

• Dom almost gets Lemon (six votes) for his amateur dramatics in throwing his stick on the floor when he falls over and rolling around like a footballer. But also for a spectacular diving reverse hit, where he didn’t touch the ball at all…

• Nev gets a number of votes, including for his shouting on the pitch of, ‘Back post, back post! Pass it! Pass it!’ to which Toby passes. Where was Nev? We don’t know, but what we do know is that he wasn’t anywhere near the back post. HOWEVER, his fate is sealed when he declares he’ll eat anyone’s food that wasn’t going to City’s teas afterwards, but he then doesn’t show up at teas…(seven votes = Lemon)

• Toby had a great game (four votes = Man). His post-match WhatsApp game? Well, luckily for him we can’t reverse our votes. That’s kinda like how a democratic political system works…

• Special mentions to Joe, Chris, Neil, Ash A and Ash D who all also got votes.

• Where’s Ollie? We still don’t know. But he wasn’t on the pitch (surprisingly only gets one Lemon vote for this…)