Full report to come once Seb has recovered enough to write it, but in the meantime we need to talk about “the incident”.

You know how, when there is a group of people jogging along and a bollard is in front of them, and one of the group opts to try and jump over the bollard rather than go around, and they get it wrong and crash crotch first into said bollard, and they end up a whimpering mess on the ground, and it’s bloomin’ hilarious? Well, Mr. Dias took this a stage further. He somehow failed to notice the (entirely conspicuous*) bollard that was vaguely in the path of the M4s pre-game run and simply charged into it at full pace. Frankly, his solid performance in the game that followed may have been the most remarkable of the afternoon. The phrase is ‘he manned up’. Which is ironic, as there are certain ways of doing that which Seb... well, I’ll leave you to fill in the rest!

* - conspicuousness being a deliberate design choice on the part of all non-evil bollard manufacturers.

Crushed 🍒**:

For our warm up Jelly took us on a nice tour of Long Road, Jan cut comers, and a moment of distraction and one bullock high bollard later and Seb safely secured lemon (which we could say was deserved after missing out the week before for turning up hideously hungover).

Moods lightened, and with latecomers wondering why Seb's warm up looked significantly less high-tempo than everyone else, people (JJ) began to realise they could get any number of citrus moments out of their systems.

Onto the pitch to practice short corners (the poorest part of the previous week's performance) and JJ decides to hamper Ollie S's ability to run by a well placed ball to the knee. 🍋. We then learnt shorts are harder to practice when the stopper has to go find pain killers and have a sit down.

The game started with a high intensity, and south getting an early short due to the first of many penetrating runs from Man of the Match Peter C, and followed with some good pressure on the Spalding goal.

But it was Spalding that struck first, a powerful short corner effort that Dave M heroically stopped off the line went lose into the D and Spalding reacted faster to convert first.

More south pressure left us open to the quick break from there young Spalding players and got they got a second.

South pressure continued to build though, with Pip, Keishi, and James H putting great effort in the middle of the park, and allowing to Peter C making another good run down the wing, firing a ball into the D to Oli W, who with the composure of a much older player, carefully manoeuvred it past the GK and gets us our much deserved first goal.

We go in at halftime 2-1 down but with much to be positive about, and so we go out determined to get the win.

Early in the second half Ollie S plays the ball from outside the D back to Pete D who puts a dangerous ball into the D, to which Paul S uses his experience to slip his man and deflect the ball expertly into the Spalding goal.

And from there it was basically all South. The defence of Jan, George W, Dave M and Pete having a lot less to do other than rotate off to hydrate, and MSG was probably working on his tan.

At some point Ollie S opens up his South goal scoring account, I was substituting off and missed it, but I'm sure it was a good one.

More pressure, and a couple of short corners for JJ to flick home (who needs practice?), and South take the game 5-2. The second flick somehow injuring a Spalding player to which JJ and his characteristic humour means joking with umpire about how it was deliberate, which on any other day should have secured the 🍋.

**Feature request to get emoji on the website. Don't make me use html/unicode.