With Ian out injured, squad numbers depleted by school sports and nobody available to help out from the higher teams, this was a chance to see what we could do with stretched resources, and for three quarters of the game the response was impressive.

A big thank you goes to the Green family for making Tarka available for 55 minutes of the game before he had to leave for cricket trials, and for leaving us Cosie for the whole game. It did mean that, after I twisted my knee we had nobody left on the bench and we played out the game with only 10 'mobile' players.

We put out a midfield with an average age of 14, with Lewis the elder statesman alongside Tarka, Cosie and Tom B, and it worked well, with a bustling contribution to defence and some very creative patterns in attack. Broxbourne had enough chances to keep Lincoln busy in goal (Nick Izzard spent the day with the 4s) but the defence was well drilled around Graham's usual dependability and we probably were good for our 1 - 0 lead at half time, Tom Q striking after an assist from Aaron mid way through the half.

After the break we noticed the senior Broxbourne players taking over the game up front and we lacked the pace and strength to contain them, and aside from the goals Lincoln came to the rescue countless times. One family scored all six goals ('dad' scoring three). Most of them came in the last ten minutes when we were missing Tarka's skills in the middle, our sweeper was hobbling and we were pressing hard at the other end for at least one consolation goal.

Distribution from the back was much improved this week, with Jamie and Greyson consistently finding the midfielders when we went wide.

Plenty to be positive about despite another bad scoreline, we now go into a long winter break for Div 8. Next league game 24 Jan.