The first league game of the season was upon us, so our captain nipped off to America and our v-c told us how wonderful it is to be retired (from work, he still plays hockey. Allegedly.) and is on his umpteenth holiday.

And so it was that denuded by holidays, call ups to some of the clubs lesser teams and the vast distance to Wisbech that we merry few set off to try to improve on last season’s slightly underwhelming league campaign. (But only if you measure success in terms of wins rather than fun, as is should be.).

Anyway, having journeyed through the Fens, we arrived at Wisbech which is actually a very pleasant town where we were warmly welcomed. Committed, non-gallivanting, v-c Rob, gave us a pre-match pep talk, the essence of which, I think was to try and win. A thoroughly alien concept.

After choosing from a plethora of match ball colours, (white was apparently the only colour acceptable to our hosts), we pushed back.

It initially looked like it would be a close game with the youth South had up front, ably supported by the bionic wisdom of skipper Barton, backed up by hard-running midfielders and an “experienced” defence.

That was before we remembered how to play and how important it was to help our young keeper, Joe, get a lot of practice and allow the opposition to improve their goal difference.

So we lost 8-1. Obviously the scribe was too focussed on running early in defence of short corners (and being sent to the halfway line by an umpire who had clearly never seen such searing pace) to capture details of the match. Some highlights nonetheless:

MoM Joe Lynch was outstanding in goal - it could easily have been double that tally without his heroics.

James Yu scoring a cracking goal sparking what looked like a possible comeback before we came to our senses.

Sandy was resolute in defence, cutting off any number of attacks down the left.

Henry’s pace and stamina on the right in a remarkable impression of Billy Whizz (Google the Beano, youngsters).

Sean taking a very unfortunate and hard hit in the unspeakables then bravely getting up and defending the resulting short.

Jo being sub for every position (as well as doubling up) with the result that I don’t think he went off at all.

Sorry to everyone else whose heroic feats of derring do I have failed to include. I am old and have a very poor memory.

Onwards! Next week we’re playing City of Peterborough 7s at Catz. We actually won this fixture last season so surely this will be the start of our reversal in fortunes demanded by Rob? After all, everyone knows the league season starts in October, right?