I have now finished editing the video of Sunday's match against Lea Valley Royals, and having watched through it all I think Trev's marks were half a mark too high more or less all round, except for Darryl, whose mark was half a mark too low !
There was no way Darryl was at fault for any of their goals and apart from that really good spectacular flying tip-over in the First Half, he also did quite a few other good saves bearing in mind that the conditions were horrendous for goalkeepers.
My adjusted marks are now on the Match Report.
We didn't play badly, and we were definitely better than the week before, but Lea Valley Royals were still the better side on the day and deserved to win, although maybe only by one goal.
They were clearly fitter than us, they had better teamwork, and they created more chances against the wind than we did.
We have got too many new players at the moment and too many players unable to play every week. Wooly and Paul Ellerker were clearly 'puffing and blowing' in the Second Half because they hadn't played for three weeks and Nick Vertigans doesn't look as sharp as he did last season when he played against us, almost certainly because he missed the whole of September and early October.
As virtually all our players are over 30, they need to be playing every week to keep their fitness levels up against this sort of opposition. (Most of Lea Valley Royals players still play in Senior Saturday football). However, we keep having the odd week where we have no game arranged and we lose our momentum.
This is exactly like the season when we finished third in the Premier Division (2002-2003). We started off badly because of almost identical circumstances, especially in finding the right tactics and positions for the quality players we had at our disposal, then after Christmas we played regularly every week, everything clicked into place and we won 13 Premier Division matches in a row (or something like that ?).
I can definitely see us doing something similar again this season but it may take a few more weeks yet.
In the meantime we shall probably continue to have close matches against the good sides and we just need a bit of luck at the right times.
Warmers' goal is now on Clip Of The Week and a pic of Dan's Grandad's wrecked umbrella is now in the Match Report.