“Victory is sweetest when you’ve known defeat” - Malcolm S. Forbes

Grey, the colour of the leaden sky that sprinkled drizzle on the Witham astroturf on Saturday and a colour that many of the 5th team are familiar with from the mirror. The team gathered to watch the closing stages of Widdle, Wiseman and Sam’s lengthy warm-up whilst casting sidelong glances at the annoyingly young and slim team from Old Loughtonians. This was to be a top of the table clash, but only the Hockeying gods would know how the day would play out.

The rest of the team warmed up and received the usual pre-match motivation from the already toasty Widdle and the definitively not playing Ross. Dan was happy to be named Benchwarmer in Chief, with Woz (who was finally wandering across the pitch) as his deputy.

Old Loughts started strongly, probing the Witham defence with some well orchestrated attacks but Daren, Widdle and Slap had the experience necessary to dampen them and start our passing game through Mr. Awesome down to the other end of the pitch to where Paddy (fitting in well with the 5s), Matt, Sam and Woz were waiting to pounce.

The greasy pitch was causing the odd slippage issue, but nothing too bad until Terry (now his legal name) went flying for the first time in the match, it was so spectacular that it earned 8.7 from the Romanian judge. The next two were less flamboyant but no less expected.

Some good pressure in the D lead to a Witham short corner half way through the first half. The ball was injected, struck, saved but Joe was on hand to slot in the rebound, the assist unanimously given to the Old Loughts keeper.

With 25 minutes gone, Tel was given a breather and replaced by Dan; presumably on the basis that Dan is fitter, quicker and a better hockey player and not just that his name on the teamsheet needed to be justified by actually spending some time on the pitch.

The half time whistle sounded, confusing Connor who still thought that there were ten minutes left. Widdle revved up the half-time motivation to fever pitch, all we had to do was keep the lead but would that be easier said than done? Ross started nervously chewing his fingernails.

Old Loughts had clearly had a case of the shouty motivations themselves as they piled on the pressure in the second half, Wiseman being called on repeatedly as the last line of defence. As the pressure mounted, the midfield fell back to more defensive positions to soak up the onslaught and Ross’s fingernails had completely disappeared as he worked his way towards the knuckles. But it meant that Old Loughts were vulnerable to the sudden break.

Connor was intercepting attacks and Joe was making runs up the right that were causing serious problems to the Old Loughts defence. Nothing demonstrated this better than Joe beating the defence entirely to be one on one with the keeper - we’ll skip over the next part but the counter attacking play was thrilling to watch. Ross’s teeth were down to wrists now.

With two minutes to go, the pressure was relieved slightly when Witham won a late short corner. Daren injected strongly straight past all of the assembled Witham attackers and directly to the Old Loughts coach who smartly set the ball on the line and allowed a fast counter attack. Yellow shirts flooded backwards as Ross’s blood pressure peaked at a fairly dangerous level. The ball was threaded through to a shooting position, but Terry made the most significant tackle of the day to snuff out the final chance from the mean in purple.

The final whistle went on a game that was, by now, twenty minutes shorter than Connor’s expectations and we’d done it, we’d held on and gone top of the league! Beers were called for and beers were drunk in celebration (soft drinks for the younger members of the squad - honest).

The 1-0 victory was not, as it turned out, the closest contest of the afternoon. In a thrilling three way shootout, Wiseman just pipped Player of the Match from Connor and Joe in recognition of his second clean sheet of the day.

Predictably, Connor ran away with the Dick of the Day prize for not knowing how long a Hockey match goes on for.