Well nothing really. In that nothing will be certain if we beat them. If we win and Q Ass lose then they can only catch us on points after that. Our goal difference is very superior (36 higher than them) but while it's unlikely it's not impossible, so Smurfy and I are determined not to accept things as done even if we win and they lose on Sunday.

Besides, Berkshire Arms are not that bad a side and held Blue Ball to a 1-1 draw recently which is a good result (we beat Blue Ball 1-0 on Sunday) so we'll have to work to take all 3 points out of it.

Hopefully, we'll win this week, Q Ass will lose and that will leave us just needing a point from 4 games to make things certain. But you know damn well that "just needing a point" can still throw up some unexpected events. We've just got to go into Sunday's game with our heads together to win.

So what's riding on this game then...

It's no good, I can't wait. Do you think if we got in touch with Berks Arms they could get a team out and play us tonight?

Fair enough, just have to win the next two games then.

Andy Miller phoned me last night to say that his mate who plays for Q Associates told him that they, along with Berkshire Arms, had just had 6 points deducted for a fight they had in a match earlier this season - meaning the league is ours.

He's taking the piss, of course, as he also made the mistake of telling Miller that they drew 4-4 with Paggies on Sunday, when we know fine well (and would always see it online or in the paper) that they won 4-1.

Either he was just wanting to wind Miller up, or he wanted us to buy it and not try very hard for the rest of the season.

So I told Miller to play along and then tell him on Friday that he is a complete fuck for trying such a lame move. That way Q Ass can turn out against Waggon with their hopes dashed.

No

Smurfy have you got a fixture list which goes beyond the Berks Arms and Shalbourne games?

AFC Dons had their appeal yesterday (after support from Tony Blair himself) and had their 18 point deduction reduced to a more comfortable 3 points (almost hinting that cheats do actually prosper).

Sadly we've dropped a little off the pace recently but are still in with a slim chance of grabbing an automatic promotion spot, but more realistic will be another chance at the play-offs to try and go up to the Conference South next season.

Reasons to be cheerful.

I know.

Don't tell him Shane

Nope. Not telling you.

Come on guys give me an update, how did you get on this morning. I'm on tenter hooks here!

There can't be two 6000th blogs, the entire Internet will self-implode.

As for the video, I was expecting something to happen at the end, like a nasty crash, or a bird flying into your visor...

I have the moral victory Mr bellamy but if it makes you feel better......Congratulations!!

Ha! - Bellers brings a whole new level of technical wizardry to the x'000th blog contest...

You bastard, Hilly. Begrudgingly, well done though.

As for Sunday, the first sending off was this midfielder, had some good touches and looked ok. Was nothing to do with Lewis, but about half way through the second half he did get fouled by Ben and they kind of fell to the ground together, this guy claiming Ben had stamped on him, but he hadn't. Ref gave a free kick but the blindingly obvious happened about 3 mins later when their player, still annoyed, took Ben out and got booked. Most people would leave it there, but the idiot decided to take someone else out and the ref talked to him again. Then, about 2 mins after that, we had had a corner which resulted in nothing, so whilst the players were running back, Chris Miller ran past him and they bumped slightly. Miller carried on, but the guy kicked out, just enough for the ref to see. Innocuous in itself, but the ref had had enough. Then, in Adebayor style, he refused to leave the pitch, then went, then came back, then finally went again!

As for the keeper, he kind of hit him but it turned into more of a head lock. Either way, whatever was said between the two will remain for only them to know...


I'll def be there Thursday, I've got the day off work. Incredibly though, by hamstring feels a bit sore, despite doing no exercise. So I must have picked up the injury just watching you boys play. Very odd...

By the way, Sillsy could you let me know when we're approaching the 6000th Blog....cheers.

Good to see you boys are keeping the quest for the Championship going. This could be another great chapter to add to the Shefford FC history books! Just to let you all know I've had some physio on my knee which appears to have done some good and I managed to play 80 mins for BT in Reading last week and haven't had any pain since so hopefully that's the end of it! It's very frustrating not being able to play on Sunday mornings and Paulas not happy cos I've put on half a stone! Anyway see you all soon.

I heard two opinions of their keeper's sending off from Sunday - Ben ran into him/he knocked Ben over - he went to see if Ben was okay/he called Ben a cry-baby - Ben called him a fat c*nt/Ben called him a fat c*nt - he swung a punch (did he hit him?) and got red carded. But what happened with the other one? I heard he was their "best player" but how/why did he get sent off and was it linked to where Lewis got booked but "was lucky to stay on"?

I wish I'd seen this game it sounds fascinating.

Latest league table. Looking healthy still. Pressure's on still. We're top of the league for a reason still. Woohoo.

I missed the game Jonny cos I was back up in Norway. Seems to be a good place for me to go for important games as both times I've been there we've won big games. And bizarrely I have an idea that we might have won them both 4-1. Spooky.

So if we get a bit closer to winning the league I might ask for club funds from Smurf to take another trip up there.

You'll also see, coming up, new additions to blogger functionality, with match clips posted on here if I have the camera rolling in time to catch the action. And, because I thought I'd forgotten the camera on the way to Norway, we bought a new camera which takes video with sound and can record 45 minutes of video. So watch out for extended highlights coming soon!

I can't fucking wait.

Well done on the result yesterday lads. I'm following you from a far and getting nervous for you. Well I've got to follow something other than Huddersfield's frantic push for middle table boredom!

Sorry mate I didn't know you guys had it sorted - the write-up is great. They don't often use our headlines (so much so that I don't really write them) but it's worth a try. Nice one. At first I thought you'd written "a busty Dave Lewis".

Smurf has given me the e-mail address to send it too. Haven't sent it yet, cause I was hoping to think of a better headline.

Will this do, or can you think of anything to make it better? I was wondering if it's a bit long.

SHEFFORD SITTING PRETTY

Shefford 4-1 Q Associates

Shefford consolidated their position as league leaders after an impressive victory over third place Q Associates.

A busy Dave Lewis scored first for Shefford, shrugging off the attention of two defenders before a neat finish into the far bottom corner.

Q Associates hit back with an equalising goal from the edge of the area after a good passing move, to score from their only real effort of first half.

Matt Atkins put Shefford back in front just before the break, latching on to a flick from Andy Miller to cleverly lift the ball over the on-rushing keeper.

Q Associates laid siege to Shefford’s goal early in the second half only to be denied by a solid defence, before Lewis’s second goal extended the lead with another clinical finish to put Shefford in complete control of the game.

The visitors then lost 2 men to red cards before Shefford skipper Tony Ilsley wrapped up the scoring in the final minutes, finishing well from a corner with his normally redundant left foot.

Dave Middlemass was Shefford's Man of the match.

Tony and I said we'd do a report yesterday, I'll post something on here in a bit and see what you think.

I've no idea where it needs to be sent etc.

If anyone wants to put some details of yesterday's game (who scored, how and in what order) then I'll do a write-up for the paper...

I can't believe Paggies Bar are gonna be in a cup final. Ah well, we had our chance and I wouldn't swap the chance for the league for a place in a cup final.

I think Blue Ball are definitely beatable though, so I'm looking forwards to this Sunday so we can take them on again, see if we can squeeze three points out of them at last...

A couple of results for you: LMP 0 Blue Ball 4
Paggies Bar 2 N'by Post Office 1 - in the cup semi final...
I think the only other game in our league was Waggon & Horses v Coopers but dont know the result of that one??

Made my day yesterday gents with that one. Sillsy I really appreciate you going to add your support, especially seeing as the game turned out to be a bit tasty. Teams can be as stupid as they like as long as we come away with the points. They've still got to play W&H and Bucklebury too so either with or without their bans coming through there's a chance they'll drop more points yet. Speaking of Bucklebury, yesterday's win officially puts them out of the running for the league title. Each game we just chip away at it, but Crabbeman's right there's still some tough games ahead and plenty of opportunity for a surprise, we just need to keep applying ourselves like we have been - even in the W&H game we battled very hard and are making ourselves very hard to score against.

Wish I could have seen the game yesterday, but I'll just have to wait for the away game. I should imagine that if you'd taken the wind out of the equation yesterday that would have gone in our favour, so we should be looking forward to it.

6 more games to go but no easy ones...

Really good team performance today everybody gave 100% and played really well lots of battling which didnt stop under a lot of intimidation i remember lots of games last season where we got bullied out of it and that didnt happen at all today. I think that is how Q Associates have done so well by intimidating teams as i thought they were no where near as good as the wagon and horses or blue ball but that doesnt mean we will have an easy game next time especially after what happened today it will be a really intresting 2nd game. Just an air of caution we must not think that we have won the league already as we have some very tough fixtures and im sure we will have some very hard training sessions to make sure we are prepared!!! Really looking forward to training at the prison on thursday i take it you will be there sills without your trainspoting coat!!! Are you coming to milton keynes silsy??

Well gents, what can I say? Great performance today (obviously, I don't know how it compares to the rest of the season), but they hardly had any chances, and were mostly restricted to trying to hit you on the break.

Even before the frankly humorous sending offs, you were well on the way to a comprehensive victory, and played some great football in the second half, with the defence looking as solid as an oak tree.

The great thing was looking at their faces as you did your team warm up - they just sat there looking very uninterested, but pretty intimidated. Hence why right from the off you had the upper hand.

A cracking game to watch as well, plenty of incident. I'll try to make it down for the return leg...

Hey hey,

I'm going to try to come along on Sunday lads, give you some Essex-toned vocal support. As long as you play your own game, you'll be fine. Think back to those titantic victories during 2003/4 season, the matches we came through...

Save your legs young Matthew as the council have already told me we will be playing at Henwick this week

Home to Q Associates. I should think Northcroft will have dried out enough by now for it to be played there.

Next game is then home to Blue Ball, so a couple of tough matches, followed by Berks Amrs and then Shalbourne. After that only 3 games to go.

So is it home or away this weekend lads?

Fuck Oceana, I'm with Macca.

Hermitage won 2-1.

If Orange doesn't get into the pubs/clubs there must be a McDonald's he can stand outside of, he might even pull a 16 year old if he's feeling confident....

http://www.smilemk.co.uk/smilegirls.html

Not sure we'll be rushing there.

Was just looking at B&B's in Milton Keynes, trying to find places that will allow groups of lads, and (this is genuine), went to a "Milton Keynes Tourism" site, clicked on Entertainment to see if there was any info about the Oceana Club, and guess what was on a big banner at the top of the page...

http://www.smilemk.co.uk/

Anyway, we might need to consider Oceana carefully as Friday's they seem to like having over 19's and Saturdays it's over 21's. We can drop Ben, Macca and Gareth off at a Whacky Warehouse maybe and collect them later on? Chris Miller will probably get by.

Matty do you know the final Q Ass score? They were 2-1 down and not really looking like scoring as we walked away...

Q Ass results since mid-November. Other than maybe the 2-0 defeat of Shalbourne, this is not an impressive list. If you boys don't take the game to this lot and roll them over, we'll just have to work hard (really very hard) for the return fixture...

League table updated with Blue Ball v Berks Arms (1-1) and PO Res v Cooper Arms (5-0). A couple of results to go in, including Meadway v W&H but that doesn't really affect us.

So after last week's game, it's actually quite good to look at the league table and remember that we're up there for a bloody good reason. Our run in is no harder than Q Associates run in, it really just puts those two games against them into more focus. But looking at the table, we should look forward to those games. Nerves are natural, but we're a bloody good side and should look forward to pitting ourselves against the other teams in the division. We can, really can, beat them all.

(Budweiser = happy beer, apparently)

Gotta be one of the funniest things I've seen in a long time.

That's the one - hope I never know how that feels.

Think this is what you were talking about shane. Ouch!!

8 games left - and the pressure is well and truly on. We're in the opposite position to last time round - we're the boys who have been top all the way through and Q Associates are the guys hanging onto our coat-tails. No game this weekend, but they're not playing either, then we play them for the first time next Sunday. Big big game, if you can make it down to cheer the lads on. I won't be there, I'm off to Norway, but last time I was there we played in a semi-final against a good team and we only had a scratch-squad out, but we bloody well won it so I'm seeing it as a good omen...

That's awesome Shaner, do I need to subscribe to watch highlights like I do with Arsenal?! You could set up 'Shefford TV', get people to pay Direct Debit's etc.

How many games left in the season then? Might try to come and watch one, got a few weekends free now that we're out of all competitions!

ha ha nice! From this week onwards - video clips of games on Shefford Blogger!!!

Just checking something:-

Bucklebury drew 1-1 with Blue Ball. Goes in our favour. I'm glad we've played Bucklebury twice already cos they're coming on strong at the moment. Q Associates drew with them and have yet to play them again...

Not a convincing win for Q Ass then. Still all to play for, though I have a feeling this one is going to go down to the wire rather than being finished in the next few weeks. Should be exciting.

Gutted to not get anything out of the game yesterday. Thought they edged it in terms of football played but we edged it in terms of chances created. You couldn't really argue with 1-0 but then you couldn't have argued a draw or a 1-0 to us either.

Looking forward to Milton Keynes. I'm not gonna take any days off but might leave at lunchtime on the Friday to head up there before the traffic gets too bad...

Yep that is the dates i have booked off work mate

Are the dates for Milton keynes weekend definate (15th - 17th June)? I need to get my the days booked off at work asap.

Q Associates Won 3 - 1

The tears are streaming down my cheeks...

I mean, look at this list!

Adebayor, Eboue, Toure (all suspended), Henry (foot), Rosicky (groin), Diaby (ankle), Justin Hoyte (hamstring), Mathieu Flamini (foot) and Robin van Persie (foot).

It's incredible. We were all thinking the Carling Cup was a bit of fun, let the youngsters play well and see what happens. Up to 87th minute it was like that, great performance, moral victory etc.

And now, a stupid bit of pushing and shoving, has left us without 3 first teamers for at least 3 matches. Out of the FA Cup, probably only manage a draw on Saturday, need to score against PSV potentially without strikers.... Why can't we get points for artistic impression?!

It's never a good week when your next game is against the mighty RFC...

Not a good week for the Arsenal boys.