It wasn't the best of weather for our rematch against the harpenden 3's, and even that was one of the causes for complaint from our opposition that day ("why, oh why, did they say the pitch was frozen??")!

Even though we couldn't control the weather we certainly started the game on the front foot. The passing was sharp, with some nice moves along the channels and Chris putting a controlled ball onto the opposition shins in the D within the first few minutes. Unfortunately not seen by the umpires, but from an impartial perspective one of the few instances where 50-50 calls went their way.

Did Taza mention - just once or twice - that he used to play for the opposition? Together with a few of the opposition who used to play for us!

So the first goal was especially satisfying: a good recovery of a short corner that was played back to the top of the D before slipping back to Andy Forshaw to find a deflection into the net.

We kept up the pressure whilst taking advantage of the fairly serious breeze behind us. A number of great breaks going forward, although too many opportunities broke down without us leveraging our overlaps and speedier youngsters.

And then - in a period of no more than 3 minutes - we showed how it should be done. A harpenden short corner was smoothly dealt with by Tommy G, who had the presence of mind to take the ball to the right touchline and launch it to our forwards. A beautiful bit of interplay then resulted in Harry slipping it past the keeper to give us a little bit of breathing room.

We continued to put the pressure on harpenden during the second quarter, but didn't manage convert what was a very strong performance cross team.

The tactical brilliance of the Captain's decision to play with the wind in the first half meant that the second half was always going to be a tougher ask. But showing resilience once again the m7s put up a strong defensive performance through most of the second half with particular callout for Sammy at centre-back who cleared the ball a number of times from shot-taking positions. Man of the match deservedly went to Josh at keeper who was extremely solid during short corners and dispatched the number of attempts on goal with consummate ease.

Here's to a drier rest of the season!