Despite missing several of last week's star performers and not playing with quite the verve we showed at Broxbourne, we really should have beaten our old bogey team Stevenage comfortably. We passed pretty well, though we should have used a bit more width, we dominated play for long periods, created upwards of 20 decent chances and 8 short corners, but just couldn't convert. Amongst all the near misses, Tom Norman but the ball in the net but the umpire blew for a short corner just as was flicking it over the last defender's stick, and Tom Q hit the post. At the back, despite another makeshift defensive line up, we had them well under control most of the time, but got caught out too far up the pitch a handful of times and let them get behind us, giving them two annoyingly soft goals, to add to a well taken penalty corner and a breakaway goal late in the 2nd half. Nick had to save a couple more one-on-one to save us further embarrassment.

We welcomed back a special guest Chris Dean, a stalwart with the 6s half a decade ago, who held central midfield together wonderfully for us and got our first goal to pull us back to 2 -1 and hope of a comeback. Tom Quinlivan got the 2nd for us when it was too late to matter. The 7s haven't beaten Stevenage in the league since our first game in 2021.

We will have a much tougher job against league leaders Blueharts next week!