The day started off well with a relaxing pre-match breakfast, before GANDO donned the infamous purple-and-white trimmed uniform for an exciting away-day of hockey. Unfortunately, that’s about as far as GANDO got before GANDO’s lovely Saturday took a turn.  

First way to ruin your lovely Saturday: forget your umbrella when you go to St Neots. Despite realising GANDO had to spend GANDO’s Saturday in St Neots, GANDO was reassured by the fact that GANDO’s journey would be spent with a few of GANDO’s teammates for company.

GANDO arrived at Long Road expecting to be greeted by the familiar fresh faces of the players who would be joining GANDO. Instead, GANDO found the car park empty. GANDO thought, “Oh, GANDO must be early, GANDO’ll check GANDO’s phone for an update”, - only to discover the second way to ruin your lovely Saturday: get the meet time wrong.

Realising GANDO’s mistake, GANDO hot-tailed it at a perfectly legal speed down the M11. Not ten minutes into GANDO’s pacey (but perfectly legal) journey GANDO ran into the third way to ruin your lovely Saturday: bloody roadworks.

GANDO arrived just minutes before push back to find out that (unsurprisingly) missing the warm-up gets GANDO put on the bench. El Capitano then arrived, also having a mare of a Saturday morning. Fortunately, Andy soon slots home our first goal and brings a sense of calm to an already chaotic morning. This clearly triggered some sort of reaction in the St Neots team who were not used to such a weird and unnatural feeling. With a shiver down their spines and the hairs on back of their necks standing to attention, the whole of St Neots stepped up to provide a helping hand.

With South responding well and putting the St Neots defence under pressure a free hit was won just outside of the D. GANDO recognising the defender had not retreated, drove quickly towards the D encouraging the defender to engage. A loud whistle followed. “Brilliant!”, GANDO thought, confident that the umpire had upgraded to a short for South. But he was wrong. “Take it again, the defence wasn’t ready”, came the call…GANDO – unhappy. GANDO – earns a green.

Fourth way to ruin your lovely Saturday: it starts to rain.

Not 5 minutes later, South find themselves behind for the first time in the game as a result of a lack of judgement, a ball hitting a post and a CF gaining an easy tap in.

Fifth way to ruin your lovely Saturday: gifting the opposition a goal.

With a stern but inspirational team talk with subtle undertones of “stop being distinctly average”, South went into the second half battling hard for every ball, forcing St Neots onto the back foot. With hard tackles being thrown in from both sides and the pace of play ramped up, the rain started heavily again. With both GANDO and a St Neots defender going for a 50/50 ball, obviously GANDO ended up with the ball. However, GANDO – unhappy again. Sixth way to ruin your lovely Saturday: having to watch hockey from the sin bin.

Defender Miles, clearly jealous that he wasn’t getting all the attention on his final match for the club, decided he wanted some of the spotlight. What came next can only be described as a tackle that much resembled a logger felling an Eastern White Pine (thank you ChatGPT).

Seven ways to ruin your lovely Saturday: two players having to watch from the sin bin.

With South defending bravely despite being two players down it wasn’t long before they were back at full capacity and ready to amount their attack. That attack came in the form of a rather smiley, friendly young man called Jonny. From close quarters he slotted away a much-deserved equaliser.

Spurred on from this, South turned up the heat on a whimpering and exhausted St Neots side. With ever-increasing random bursts of horrendous weather, it was only a matter of time until disaster struck. A well thrown aerial over the top into a crowded D resulted in an almighty swing and deflection into the roof of the South net. You could hear the South hearts break.

Eighth way to ruin your lovely Saturday: lose to St Neots.

So what have we learnt from this harrowing experience?

1. Don’t travel to St Neots: The traffic on the A428 is awful.
2. Yes I write match reports mainly about me - sue me.
3. Good luck at your new club, Miles. You served us well.