This game followed a specific, and mostly unfortunate pattern. Which was that South had the ball on our sticks in the City half but ran out of patience and rather than switching the ball from side to side tried to force it forwards either by powering it through sticks or by dribbling past players. Not a great plan against the ex-Premier Division players in the City rearguard whose legs may have gone since those days, but whose stick skills very much haven’t. Cue turnovers, and the ball calmly shifted to a free man who could ping it up to their front line. Who won shorts that were crisply struck into our goal.

That happened three times, with one open play goal for the visitors that was nicely taken by one of their kids. We got a couple, Matt W on the far post to turn home our move of the match after a series of triangle passes had completely opened up the City rearguard (there might be some kind of hint there…) and Rob B scoring seconds after we had gone 4-1 down to make the final score 4-2.

South were left searching for the positives from the game. These were present – the two goals we had scored were as many as league leaders City had conceded in their other six games this season combined. And we had more of the ball and spent more time in their half than they did in ours. We also had around the same number of shorties… but they scored three from theirs and we got zero from ours. We may not have even got a shot off. Hmm.

The things to work on in training were obvious – attacking with speed when it's on mixed with reconising when it isn't (or when it was but ;the opportunity hasn't been developed quickly enough so has passed by) and in those cases being patient holding and switching possession to work a new opening, and spending some time drilling penalty corners so we start to score goals from these rather than hoping something will work off-the-cuff.

Live and learn, eh?