Cambridge South M5s had been in high spirits most of the week, with lots of joking around looking forward to our away match against Ely M3s, who we had managed a rather convincing win against in the home tie.

The WhatsApp group in fact decided on a shake up of our usual roles to let some players try out new positions. So Howard "UnicornEmoji" Steed got to play on the wing, and myself and Ky found ourselves promoted to striking duties, with Peter Creed and Alex West dropping into midfield.

Unfortunately our new goalkeeper, Ben, couldn’t be available this weekend so after a roll of the dice John Gourd was picked to be padded up, and won Man of the Match with some very important saves.

All this joking about led to my inevitable Lemoning. A rather poor joke started at Pay and Play: "I can’t believe you only won two-one last week, maybe I should go up front and show you how it’s done," turned into a bizarre expectation that I would be getting a hat-trick. Spoiler: I didn’t.

A last-second jest from Andy T that a goal should be scored within eleven seconds was almost a prophecy. Somehow I found myself in space in the Ely D after just fifteen, only to put the resulting effort on to the post. And so we did our usual M5s’ routine: out of the gate real fast, keeping pressure on Ely for a good portion of the opening half.

Stu Creed converted a short corner early on. We set up our second after a run down the right touchline, a crossing shot to the D, where Ollie (captain for the day) was waiting to convert.

Numerous other half chances came about in the first half, but playing into the slower (read: muddier) end of Ely’s pitch was wreaking havoc on our passing, but did result in being able to pounce on the clearances.

The second half saw a revitalised Ely team hungry for their chance - they kept us pinned into the last third for large portions, as Stu ended up dropping into the hard-battling back line. Battling was so hard, in fact, that at one point Andy T lost his stick, Andi C fell over - as did many of us, but he was the only one worried he may have grazed his chest (again, spoilers: he didn’t). David B got a, "How’d he stop that?" from the Ely player next to me, and both Shahzad and James P came in with strong (and mostly fair - looking at you, James!) block tackles.

In some of our fewer forays into the Ely D in the second half, Ky took a bump and had to sit out the rest of the match, and my personal lemon, young Peter attempting a reverse shot only to have the ball pop up and almost brain Ollie.

Back to Ely: The opposition piled on the pressure. Numerous Ely short corners, and even a scare nearer the end of the game where one of Ely’s talented youngsters just missed out on converting at the far post, summed up our holding out, i.e. just.

So, covered in sand and mud we headed to teas, which with Ely always being good sports was a friendly affair…even if we had to share it with the rugby lot…who even felt the need to silence us so they could prattle on in their speeches.

And on one final note from the drive home, Simon "I don’t like playing centre-mid without Seb; it’s harder work, you’ve got to actually run about and defend" K…so I take it it’s back to business as usual for myself next week?