Christmas and New Year’s Eve - a time of merriment and over-indulgence. Chocolate as a pre-breakfast snack? Why not? When is it a suitable time to have a drink? Anytime? Is there such a thing as too much cheese? Clearly not.

All this is a great way to prepare for the second half of the season, especially if you get straight into it four days after New Year’s Eve without picking up a stick or waddling further than from your sofa to the kitchen.

Hmmm…

Don’t worry though: it’s a rearranged fixture against the Vets and everyone knows that vets = veterans = old blokes of 70+ just having a bit of a stroll, so it would all be fine.

Pardon? Vets is over 35s? And half of them used to play National League?

Oh.

The pre-game did start positively for the M2s with even VC and skipper for the day, Shin (due to the potential death of J Menzies from bubonic plague), turning up at the agreed meet time. The team were missing a few players, but this was a strong side nonetheless (an M2s squad with depth - who would have ever thought it?!) The team were bolstered by the appearance of Daz who had taken a day off from visiting various hospital A and E departments.

It was a well-fought first half with some quality, quick, passing hockey. South made good use of transferring around the back and were making the most of the spaces created on the pitch. The first goal (probably?) came from a slick passing move and was duly finished by T Blair, donning a pair of his mother’s tights, freshly unwrapped from Christmas. A couple of short corners later on and the M2s were 2-0 up: a well-worked slip at a short corner freed up J Browne to hit the backboard. The half time whistle went and South headed into the break on the up.

Now, like Christmas Day, this match could be split into two sections (yes, all games have two halves but just go with the metaphor too). A jolly beginning, with many highlights and a huge lunch/dinner (goals) with maybe a tad of alcohol thrown in for good measure, followed by an post-eat food coma in which nothing is achieved and maybe a few arguments unfold with the alcohol kicking in. Thus, the metaphor is complete as, in the second half, South let City back into the game, allowing them to control the tempo more and take hold of the match. They equalised not too long after the break, aided by T Anns giving his best Jonny Bairstow impression and letting the ball go between bat and pad at a short corner and into middle stump/goal (sometimes, metaphors can go too far and become confusing). Not too long after, City converted another short corner. This time (to keep the cricket reference going) a ball outside of off-stump (the other post essentially), that should have been left alone was met with an inside edge. Two-two. Tempers did fray and some cards were handed out (probably something linking to Christmas cards that could be worked in there), James B swapped scoring goals with breaking noses, T Steed (who was man/adolescent of the match by the way) decided to stop the ball with his foot in an attempt to hurt himself in sympathy with his opponent and C Troll got a bit confused as to where the pitch was and aerialed the ball out of the complex.

With five or ten minutes to go South started to perk up a bit again; time to try and regain some of the mid-morning enthusiasm. Alas, there were no more goals to be gained and the new decade was to start with a draw. On to St Ives next week!

Oh, Puddefoot nearly choked to death on some pizza at post-match teas too - just to try and stop Daz and Menzies from claiming all of the near-death experience attention.