So it turns out that games away in Norwich have not been that good for South this season. In a roller-coaster game, we weren't quite able to pull Dragons back to a five-all draw after a slow and sloppy start put us tw—nil down after around fifteen minutes. Credit to the opposition who stretched the pitch and got behind our defence on a number of times to score some simple but well worked goals.

Across the pitch there were some moments of brilliance and high quality play, James running the midfield, Harry L causing trouble up top and I was pleased to clear two off the line in the first half to keep us in it.

Oddly, three of our four goals came from a series of different shorties:

• James with a second-time reverse stick shot after a good save, proving that practice does make perfect after quite a few drills on Tuesday evenings,

• Joel with a strong slap off the top of the D to beat the player on the line, and

• Pearson with a super drag flick to draw us back to three-four (behind) and give a small window of hope for a draw or win.

The big moment came towards the end of the game, when I latched onto a deflection from a shorty, only to play a one-two off the defender’s body and then follow up into the goal. Was it a goal, was it a flick…? Flick. There goes my hopes for a second brilliant goal in my South career to date (more on that below). Pearson duly converted the flick (top corner) and although we pushed hard for the last two minutes to find an equaliser, it wasn't to be.

Another high pressure game next week as Nomads travel a few miles for the local derby. I expect Joel will already be quite excited.

It would be rude of me not to mention some of the squad's excellent maths work on the drive to Norwich. Shame, however, I didn't get the goal which would have significantly improved my chances of retiring before my 400th birthday. P.S. For any mathematicians, please don't criticise the following as there are some assumptions…

The facts:

Number of goals scored by Stu R in South career to date = 1.
Number of games played before this one = 96.
Time (in games) which I could reasonably expect to play before I score 100 goals based on current run-rate = 9600 games.

Therefore:

Assuming I play ~60 minutes on average per match, that will be 9600 hours of hockey to reach 100 goals, /24 hours = 400 days of hockey. Alternatively, assuming 22 games per season, 9600 games = 436 seasons = about 460 years. Incidentally this is also how old Paresh's hockey stick is and the expected time Dave Aston may well need before his game improves.

All credit (none is due) to Harry C and team for their calculations…