There are many ways of spending a Saturday afternoon. Plotting the downfall of a loved one. Staring forlornly into the middle distance next to a lake. Stripping to the waist and chopping wood to impress your transgender lover. I chose to spend my Saturday afternoon by performing a series of fruitless shuttle runs laterally across a hockey pitch, desperately chasing long-haired Cambridge University students, who had very little interest in letting me join in their game.

As a pasttime it’s not for everyone. But there is a perverse pleasure to be drawn at the end of a game whilst enjoying a shower mint, from having put a shift in, and that’s exactly what we did.

The M2s are a team that ask questions of the opposition, namely: ‘Do you know where you’re going for teas?’ and ‘Have you seen our left midfield, Mikey Karran? He said he was going to be here but I haven’t heard anything from him.’ As it was, the game was a good’un. It’s always a good sign when the Cypriot international on your side points out the Cypriot international on their side and tells you that he has excellent skills, but is also very quick, but don’t worry because he also has a very good aerial too. Perfect. Buoyed by that news we set about trying to dispossess our opposition. Cue the shuttle runs. To our great credit and helped out no little by our own international, Paresh, we played at times with great incision, and forged a lead thanks to, well, Paresh. Nik Patel filled in to great effect at left back, Tom Marchant harried, Panos glided, and Tom Anns smouldered in a protective face mask. Maybe he was born with it, maybe it’s fungal.

More shuttle runs. I was getting closer to the ball. Like a more haggard, asthmatic Harry Potter searching for the snitch, occasionally I would catch a glimpse of the ball before it disappeared again in a flurry of well-conditioned hair.

In about the fiftieth minute I actually touched the ball. In fact I touched it so gently that it crossed the line by seven centimetres, and all of a sudden we were two-nil up against a team who were top of the table. We cheered, we high-fived, someone said something in Latin that really riled the classicists amongst the opposition. Like Icarus however that was as high as we flew. Drunk on the thought of three points, we got burned badly on the sun of ambition, and fell into the sea of disappointment, dragging ourselves briefly on to the bank of hope, only to fall back once again into the sea of disappointment. Two-three. Our bodies as tired as the above metaphor.

A valiant effort, but more questions to answer, namely: ‘Should we adopt a half-court press?’, ‘Why is Tom Anns still wearing his protective face mask in the showers?’ and, ‘Seriously, where the hell is Mikey?’