It was a bright, sunny morning as we descended on Long Road. Buzzing from the weekend before, we were keen and raring to go, so much so we decided to meet thirty minutes early for penalty corner practise. I’d like to say everyone arrived promptly but we did have stragglers - being on time isn’t South’s strongest trait; hungover from the night before, Alice Hug and Maddy, The Cottage & Carly all arriving late, Katie realised that leaving her hockey shoes at home wasn’t the best idea so had to go back to fetch them.

Changing room fun commenced with Flix’s speaker blaring out my Spotify running playlist which apparently isn’t to everyone’s taste. Some better bangers were played and we all got a glimpse of Blythe’s Saturday dancing moves. “Here we, here we, here we ******* go.”

After a good warm up, we put our game faces on and we were ready to take on the travelling side of Spalding. With all the girls having individual objectives we took to the starting line to get the game going.

Spalding had push back and started strong, and so did we but what you really want to hear is how the goals were scored:

1. 100% conversion rate from our only attacking short corner of the match. A bobbling injection from Alice H which was meant to go to me went to Alice W, standing on the left. The defenders still ran out at me so Alice H screamed for the ball back (this was one of the short corners we had practiced earlier that morning) and her first time touch swept it into the back of the goal. About two minutes later Spalding scoresd, making the score line one-one.

2. A strong hit from Alice W into the D hit a defender's stick, deflected at head height and Alice H reached out and tapped it on the reverse around the keeper into the net.

3. There was a nice drive up the right hand side, passed to Alice W at right forward who drove to the baseline, gave it a whack and Alice H was on the P-spot with a first time deflection.

4. Alice W didn’t fancy scoring, but if we recorded goal assists, Alice W would have four this game as she passed the ball to Robs Murray who was standing beside the post. Straight tap from Robs to hit the backboard and boom, fourth and final goal of the match.

It wasn’t until later on in the evening that we discovered that during a defensive short corner Blythe ran out, fell over her own feet and landed face first on the astro. LOL now if it wasn’t for Maddy being hungover and sick on the side of the pitch, this may have been a worthy Lemon moment but Maddy got all but one of the Lemon votes: commiserations.