Co-written by Rob Barton, as Nev joined us straight from work 20 minutes into the first half and refused our suggestion of, "Just make up what happened, it'll be fun!"

Cambridge South Mixed XI (well XVI) arrived mostly early for the midweek friendly against Long Road cohabitants, Long Road. It was their annual open day exhibition match. A showcase of hosts versus their community partners.

Everyone seemed relaxed. Our warm-up consisted of reminiscing with young Ben, who has temporarily defected; trying to procure a second umpire, thanks to Guy who, along with new Adam, stepped up and umpired very well; and of course tonking the ball at Jason who, with arm and leg reaction time of nanoseconds, looked particularly sharp. Oh and there were some tokenistic drills too.

Ollie and Hannah called us in to explain the in-vogue 2-3-2-3 system, who was playing where and after all that what everyone's names were. Then it was finally time. Time for the single most important element of any pre-match preparation: the 1-2-3-South thing with the sticks, of course.

With that, the game started and from the off the pace was fast and this didn't relent throughout the entire game. The co-host cohorts seemed well structured and had a few players who really knew what they were doing. Sticks were quick, 3D skills were exhibited and, shock horror controversy, there may or may not have been a tiny bit of backing in.

South however looked the stronger side and the game settled down into a pattern of midfield play leading to regular waves of purple attack. The young hosts' goal was peppered a number times, typically through robbed possessions, long and short corners, and seemingly endless repeats of Hazza's one-on-ones, which couldn't ever quite overcome the keepers' well-positioned feet.

So it was rather against the run of play when Long Road scored. One of the whipper-snappers who could play a bit picked the ball up and drove into the D before unleashing a reverse hit strike. It was a decent bit of play. To be fair to the youngsters, whilst South's chances would be counted on both hands, they had had a few half chances themselves in the twenty minutes.

At this point Nev Warren arrived... and immediately took to geeing up the team with his mid-field co-stars Seb, Rebecca and Rhiannon. Subbing onto the pitch he began to help orchestrate the come-back and revival with immediate effect!

The mere presence was overwhelmingly positive and brought the best out of Goal King contender Harry Lewis, who passed beautifully to the unmarked newcomer to blaze a shot narrowly over the bar.

Half-time was served with not only Jelly Babies but the Haribo staple. There were 16 mouths to feed! Ollie Lamming and his lovely co-captain/wife Hannah did their best to calm and coerce the Purples into teamwork.

It worked superbly as, almost immediately from the push-back, Harry passed for the second time and set up hard-working Seb Dias with a beautiful tap-in to an empty net. It was from here that South started to seize control of the game and almost minutes later they scored again another goal of great simplicity and excellent teamwork, following short sharp passes between James, Seb, Harry, Ollie to find Alice unmarked on the back post, who calmly made it 2-1.

The next score would be crucial in a game that had see-sawed between the youth of Long Road and experience of C South. Crucially, a well-struck return-to-injector short corner from Izzy was deflected into the poor defender on the line. New club member Adam Catley rushed from his umpiring half to correctly overturn the dangerous play ruling into a penalty stroke. Being the initial short corner striker, Izzy stepped up and dispatched the stroke to make it 3-1 and realistically end the opposition's challenge.

Both sides still produced chances and Rob Barton, Izzy McDonald-Parry, Harry and Alice all had half-chances to increase the lead. Some excellent runs and defence from Charlotte, Nik, Blythe, Jenny and Hannah mopped up the best Long Road could throw at us. Jason Mann in goal was also called upon to coolly display his class between the goal posts!