St Ives away, and the return to hockey for the lads. With great anticipation, we travelled each and every one of us alone, Backstreet Boys and Busted blaring out of our car stereos, with the support of our sweet sweet solo voices. Apart from Maz, who made a lot of infectious friends on the bus to the pitch - what commitment from our South American maverick (just don’t stand too close to him over the next few days). 

Having all arrived safely, we were of course simply relieved that we hadn’t  missed the turning that would mean us ending up closer to Marchant’s Tier of Doom region. Such was the relief that Walshy may well have taken his eye off the ball a tad and not seen the lunatic of a car park fence railing that decided to leap out in front of his car - perhaps a desperate cry for help from said railing. Fortunately, no real harm was done, apart from the awful banter from Tom Anns as a result at the pitch to the rest of the team. 

And then the game. Not much to really report. Apart from the fact that it reminded me of two famous Andy Gray commentary quotes from FIFA 97 on the Mega Drive - “he couldn’t hit a cows backside with a banjo that fella” and “oh dear, that didn’t work out well for him”. In other words, some great hockey, dominating possession and so many shots and short corners for us that I lost count. Perhaps Pistol Pete Creed could reflect on his video camera and report the actual stats? For me, it felt to me like the recent Premiership encounter between Spurs and Man City and the supposed ‘absolute perfect’ performance from Spurs according to Aston. To remind you of those stats...

- City 66% possession vs Spurs 34%
- City 22 shots vs Spurs 4
- City 597 passes vs Spurs 313
- Spurs 2-0 City

The above reflects how I feel about the game and our performance. Frustrating yes, but encouraging in a weird kind of way as well - surely we will never lose a game like that when we dominate so much again? 

Let’s just hope we are not too ‘Spursy’ and can bounce back. After all, we are a good team and as Jim so delightfully reminds us regularly, a sexy one too.