He looked nervously at his mobile for the seventeenth time in the last five minutes. Right foot jiggling, Toynton knew the transfer window was coming to a close soon and he still needed a couple more reinforcements for the squad. Billowing a cloud of vape fumes, his screen flashed and vibrated with an incoming message. ‘You beauty… It’s game on, Peterborough.’

Traffic reports looked grim for the journey up north; a skiving team-mate meant to work the Saturday, an underaged wonder-kid or two imported from the other divisions, a superstar or two parachuted in from the heavens (or six week holiday in tropical climates) and the usual hard-nosed collective of Team Hubris were ready for what was going to be a hard fought match.

Coach growled his pre-match prep, not that Handsome George and Rob ‘Google-Sheets’ Hartle paid much heed; nor to the rules and regulations of the National League Division 1 North. Finally waved on to the pitch, our physios set up the drinks stations, the sports analysts unfurled the video cameras and Coach mic’ed up whilst we lashed perfect passes across the pitch in warm-up.

The game was in every aspect the hard fought battle of wills between two evenly matched sides. South kept to the game plan early and were rewarded with a beautiful goal off Rob ‘Stix’ Hartle and lead into the half-time break, one-nil up. Toynton even started dreaming of his first clean-sheet but, as we know, never jinx something by premature meditation…

CoP scored two, amidst a whirlwind of pressure, and if it weren’t for spectacular efforts saving some certain goals on the line it would have been a capitulation beyond hope. We never quite understood it so much as felt it in our guts, but going home with a third loss in a row was potentially going to be too much for Team Hubris to bear. So we scored another to make it a draw and drove home.