v Sunbury (A) 15 November 2008

Well, a bit of a change this week.  Instead of being hammered by regular Conference opponents after a difficult and long journey, we got hammered by less regular opponents after a straightforward and short journey.  It was lovely to renew acquaintance with old local rivals Sunbury: what they did to us was, however, a bit less lovely. But I'm getting ahead of myself here.

We started off ok, our exotic mix of old (7) and very young (4, with a combined age of +/- 60) players determined to put up a good show. The problem was that Sunbury were a rather useful team - thanks for waiting till after the game to tell us modestly you beat Wallington twice last season, guys - and they were a bit goal hungry. Pressure soon told and, though we didn't get the rub of the green with a couple of deflections, hey, scores like this don't lie:

HALF TIME: Sunbury 5 'Dogs 0  

They gave us oranges at half time and the offer of a swap of goalkeepers, by the sound of it. But before you could say 'take him, he's yours - and you can keep him till Easter!' our backboard was soon rattling again to the sound of annoyingly well-taken goals. So what consolation points for the 'Dogs inmidst this canine carnage?  Well, all 4 of our youngsters played as well as they could have, and none of them looked totally out of place. Everyone else also continued to try to stem the flood of Sunbury attacks, no canine heads or shoulders dropped and we kept on doing our best which simply wasn't good enough. 5 more goals duly arrived in the 2nd half but, you'll like this bit, the last of them was a resounding boomer from a short corner from Ian G, followed at once by the final whistle, bringing to an end:

FULL TIME: Sunbury 9 'Dogs 1

Well, we got one - as tends to be our wont this season, so look forward with ridiculous optimism to playing a couple of teams between now and Christmas who might, if we play really well, not put quite so many on us.

WINSTON OF THE WEEK: a no-brainer. Wonderful to see Jimmy back with us and looking in pretty good fettle. Well done for a typically no-nonsense efficient umpiring display, and for a match summary which defied even this correspondent's sense of optimism "I thought you were a bit unlucky, the way things were going you just ran out of time!!"

Many thanks to Sunbury for a fine game on a fine pitch - and excellent hospitality afterwards. Best of luck to you on your exotic 4 Counties travels up and down the M4 corridor and (...I can't really believe I'm saying this) let's hope we can do it all again soon.