For the benefit of Mr Sills, here's an overview of yesterday's game.

Turnpike suck. Their players are rubbish and they only had 9 men. Apparently Jenny (Tony's girlfriend) has a younger brother who's signed on for them. Fair enough he is quite young, but they hadn't even phoned him to see if he would play for them. Better to have him on the pitch and stick him up front surely? Just tell him to chase everything. Ah well. So anyway they only had 9 players, and at least 4 of them were very poor.

So we decided to pull out a right stinker. You can expect them to dig in a bit and hold out for as long as possible, but we made it harder for us than they did. Lewis fired in what he made to look like an easy goal after about 15 minutes, (Owen would have fired it straight at the keeper) but after that we struggled. Not struggled in terms of under pressure (they had one good chance to equalise but it fell to one of their players who was rubbish and he shot wide) but struggled in terms of having too much time/space/options. Consequently people either held onto the ball for too long while sizing up the passing options, tried to play a killer ball because they weren't under any pressure just to pass it to the nearest person, or tried to do the right thing but for some reason (too relaxed maybe?) didn't kick the ball properly and gave it away.

Really frustrating to watch and there was a bit of moaning going on. A lot of that moaning was me, so I tried to bite my tongue and encourage instead. Hard work though. Matty went on at half time and provided a reminder of what composure is, but with 15 minutes of the second half gone it was still only 1-0 and I started to get a little nervous of them nicking an equaliser and putting us under real pressure. They've pretty much lined 7 players up along their 18 yard line and left 1 guy up front, but we couldn't break them down.

Browny and I went on with 30 minutes to go and after 5 minutes Crabbeman's slipped me the ball on the left hand side. Lots of space and time to pick out Lewis and he's nutted it in giving the keeper no chance. Within a couple of minutes Lewis has picked the ball up on the edge of the D, jinked right to open up some space and fired a fizzing shot straight through all of them and into the net. Then a couple of minutes later again someone (can't remember who crossed it, might have been Crabbeman) crossed it over for Lewis to head it back across the keeper and in again.

After that we had a fair few other chances, one came off my nipple (still sore today) and Lewis was hungry for a double hat trick but couldn't find the net again.

Big shouting match with their linesman/manager too. They got a corner and everybody except their keeper went up into the box. Lewis and I stood up on the halfway line telling Smurf that as soon as he got the ball to launch it. That's what happened and their manager's taken a couple of steps and then put his flag up. Cheating bastard. Lewy and I have gone for him, calling him everything under the sun. The ref didn't do anything so we laid in a bit more.

Later on I've gone over to take a corner and he said "See I've let you go there" cos he hadn't flagged as I was running through. I said "That's cos I was onside" and he said "Yeah but you have a go at me when I do flag but you don't say thank you when I don't." Prick. Man of his age, in charge of impressionable young men and blatantly cheating like that when you're already 4 goals down. Should be ashamed of himself.

Anyway, that's how it ended. We played much better in the second half of the second half. I guess it was just an awkward match, but easily the worst we've played for a long time, til we got that 2nd goal, then we started finding feet a bit more and doing what worked.

Got the new kit in now so we can wear that for the first time against Bucklebury on Sunday. They've not had a bad start to the season but haven't been tested up against anyone decent yet. Think we may have a full squad to choose from too for the first time this season.