Saturday is Hockey day, and Hockey day is great. However, there are some Saturdays when this feeling only lasts until opening the curtains on a mass of puddles, with steady heavy rain still adding more and a heavy sky in all directions. This Saturday was one of those. Still, the weather is appalling; no-one in their right mind would want to go out in it, but…HOCKEY! Let’s do this.

That was the reaction of eleven of the twelve Southerners, anyway. The one naysayer was Simon, who sent a plaintive “Is hockey still on in this weather?” email. For added gravitas, this desperate plea was sent to the entire squad in Comic Sans, with the occasional bit italicised for good measure. Never in the field of human conflict has so much of a Lemon presented himself with so few competitors. Or something like that.

Having assured the Wicked Witch of the West that there was no hope of getting the match called off over a little drizzle (a.k.a. a steady downpour), the fearless(ish) twelve set out up the A14. One particular player was certainly well up for the match; Will Jones was back against his former club and, indeed, team. Will has been a regular in the M3s’ midfield this season, but this week that made him a rarity as a club-wide availability crisis meant a pretty scratch engine room had been assembled for us. However, what they might have lacked in familiarity with each other was more than compensated for in youthfullness, as the five man rotation for the four midfield spots were all between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five, utterly unheard of for South M3s.

The match opened with both teams probing, but few clear chances. It was probably twenty minutes in before a really good goalscoring opportunity arrived, but when it did it came our way and saw us move in front. A free-hit in the Saints’ twenty-three was knocked back by Will to an unmarked Jan. He fired towards the circle, Ellis deflected the ball on/tried to control and didn’t quite get there (depending on your cynicism levels), which presented the ball beautifully to a nicely positioned and unmarked Jason on the back post. He swept home emphatically.

One soon became two, due to good play and good umpiring. Caesium Simon (caesium because he reacts badly to water…see Lemon… Oh, please yourselves!) tried to dribble the ball in from the right flank, and got it on to a Saints’ foot in the circle. Short corner? Well, possibly, but not immediately. The home defence stopped, Will didn’t, the umpire rightly allowed play to continue and Will took advantage to fire the ball sweetly into the far corner for a very pleasing personal triumph.

Being two down meant the hosts had to throw midfielders forwards. This put pressure on our backline, who found themselves outnumbered on quite a few occasions but despite that managed to prevent Saints fashioning any clear scoring opportunities. In fact, I can’t remember Matt having a save to make in the opening half. If anything, we looked much the more likely, as the Saints’ high press gave us lots of space on the counter, with some crucial last-man tackles from exposed Saints defenders preventing further damage.

The second half continued in a similar vein as we sat back and absorbed and then tried to hit on the counter. A number of good opportunities to make it three were spurned: Jason rounding the keeper but then missing his reverse sweep at an open goal (and then kicking the ball for good measure); Simon having something like four attempted reverse flicks in ten seconds, all of which the keeper smothered; and the Aquaphobic One also trying to sneak a shot in at the near post which was brilliantly saved by a foot-from-nowhere stretch from the Saints’ stopper.

Going the other way, the hosts were becoming annoyed by misplaced passes, the umpires, the world in general (or to summarise: annoyed by losing). They tried to use that to their advantage, and the attacks coming at us were certainly energetic. Matt was now having to earn his corn, which he did with aplomb. In fact Matt had kept four straight clean sheets prior to this game, and the longer we could help him manage another, the better the chances of a total implosion from our opposition… Not long enough, as it turned out, as we fell into ball-watching on a free hit with fifteen minutes left, which found its way across to the left wing, where it was reverse swept accurately in off the base of the far post.

After this there was a real risk of not winning a game we had had the chances to kill off long before. The hosts continued to pile on the pressure and won a number of penalty corners. But to do that they had to throw even more men forwards leaving yet more space in their half, which we finally exploited with a good, clean counter-attack. The move was simplicity itself, JT taking a quick free hit wide out left in our twenty-three and drag-sweeping it up to Jason, who had found himself oodles of space on halfway out by the left touchline. Jason pinged the ball centrally for Simon, who collected well to be one-on-one with the keeper. He drew the stopper to his left and then slipped the ball under him before he had had time to ground his dive. That surely gave us the cushion we needed, right?

Despite our third coming inside the final five minutes, there was still time for more home pressure and another two or three penalty corners. They went the way of the previous half dozen or so, as the game finished three-one to the M3s. The good news continued from elsewhere as leaders St Neots 3rds lost at City 6ths, which meant our win here was good enough to take us back to the top of the table on goal difference. If we can continue to play in the manner we did today, that will really help our chances of staying there for a prolonged spell…