A 5pm start to a game… lovely. Except it didn’t begin then due to an injury in an preceding match – when I showed up at Bretton Gate I found most of our team (who had rocked up early after a roadwork warning) ensconced in the bar watching the Six Nations. Hmm. This may not be the way to prepare to play ourselves. They didn’t even have the excuse of it being freezing outside – despite the early February date and the sunset start, which would often seem temperatures plunging, it felt distinctly spring like.

After the team dragged themselves outside and stopped joking about agreeing a 2-2 draw with the hosts and watching the TV instead (wouldn’t have been a good move, it turns out) we managed to get ourselves going passing and moving with an innovative warm-up on the locked-absolutely-inaccessible-oh-what-is-this-open-gate-tennis-courts, and promptly transferred that to the pitch. Yes, that’s right, the traditional slow M5s start was mysteriously absent when we have a focus and intense pre-game. Funny that.

South hit the game passing in triangles. Centre-back -> full-back -> pivot -> full-back -> wing. And so on. 10 yard simple passes to the unmarked man. It was all strangely easy. Peterborough are a mid-table side in our league, just a few places below the M5s, so we were expecting to be more pressed when in possession… but that just shows what happens if you let the ball do the moving instead of trying to dribble it.

Peterborough did have some moments with the score at 0-0 (Ben’s training video of the match shows one shot saved and another he forced into flashing wide by covering up the angles), but South were playing the more progressive Hockey and that was resulting in territory and circle penetrations. That said our opening goal was ultra-straightforward: a quickly taken free-hit out by the right touchline catching the home defence dawdling, which allowed Jan a line to fire the ball straight towards the goalie, Rob stepping in front of the ‘keeper to deflect high and in. It wasn’t just the home side who appeared caught on the hop by this as the goal generated no cheering as if our side hadn’t quite assimilated what was going on either! But no, the goal was good: 1-0.

South’s best period of the game followed either side of half-time. Players were getting more and more confident in the idea the they didn’t have to go forwards to attack, allowing us to pass-pass-pass our way up the field. Even when it did go into a contest, Player-of-the-Match James T was often there to snake out a stick, make an impressive pick and then spin behind his marker to add forward carry to the team. Our second goal duly followed… and was much like the first, Jan again taking a free-hit before the defence had managed to set themselves, which allowed him a 30 yard ball up to Rob in the circle. This time Rob was wide of the near post, so he attempted to angle his deflection across goal to the far. Post-game Rob admitted he was trying to score with this, but got too much on it… which worked perfectly as Jordan was completely unmarked at the back stick and had a yawning open goal to finish into. The sort of goal where everyone stops knowing it’s going to be a goal a second before the ball actually goes over the line.

Peterborough began to throw bodies forward looking to find a way back into the game which gave Ben more work to do after a fallow period, but also allowed more space for counters. Nev had a third disallowed for contact with his foot in the build up, not seen by the near Umpire but spotted by the far one. The right decision reached in the end – it wasn’t just South getting their teamwork right on the day. However Nev had a chance to make up for it three minutes from time when he flicked around the last defender and raced clean through. The Peterborough goalie raced to the very edge of his circle to meet the threat… which just presented Nev with the chance to pass around him to Rob, who had an open goal to bundle it into.

And with that it was back to the bar to chew over one of the M5s best performances of the season. Which, given we are as high up the league table as we have basically ever been, are also up there in the list of the very best that Cambridge South Men’s 5ths have ever produced.