With two games left of the season, the M2's entered their penultimate home game on the back of a poor run of results, having lost (somewhat unfortunately and largely against the quality of performance) 4 on the bounce and ending the rot last weekend with a 3-3 draw.

Arriving at 9:45 with good availability, the team started the day full strength and full of confidence on a beautiful spring morning. An aeroplane lazily drawing a smoke smiley face in the cloudless blue sky, much to the delight of the South juniors and Nik. Pete wobbled in on his bike, the morning after his 30^th birthday, showing the sort of commitment a captain can only dream of. Not even the late arrival of Doug from his morning shift (Congrats for finally joining the world of work!) could spoil the mood. But one man was not there.

Having only confirmed on Spond he was attending the game at 9:45 (the meet time), I knew he was going to be late, there was still no sign of him when the umpires signalled 5 minutes until pushback, the skip hastily sent a text to remind him of his tardiness.

Whether the team were still daydreaming of smoke smiley-faces or pondering where on earth our 3^rd sub could be, it took 25 minutes for us to actually wake-up and string more than 2 passes together, by which time we were 3-1 down.

After a smart top corner save from Matt via a St Ives drag flick, he was unable to do much to stop the next two which found the net in the same spot. The last of which was enough of a Will Smith-esque sucker punch to finally wake the 2s from their stupor.

Finally awake and passing slickly, South scored two quick goals by Creedy and Tuna before the halftime whistle blew, to draw the scores level.

There was still no sign of the river-dancing invisible man, with many of the spectators deciding to play a game of ‘Where’s W-Ali?’ Although maybe the original name is more appropriate. It wasn’t until 10 minutes in to the second half that he finally decided to show his sheepish face with some lame excuse that I didn’t bother listening to.

Despite dominating the second half, South once again struggled to make their superiority count. This was until 2s debutant Henry, driving down the baseline, slapped the ball practically from the line between the goalkeeper and his near post into the far backboard. MoM John added his second and the teams’ 5^th a few minutes later, ensuring the end of the game could be seen out relatively comfortably as 5-3 victors.

With the result being more important than the performance at this stage, the boys will be hoping for another 3 points next weekend to end the season on a high.