with that to Fisher, who are a team of full-timers. They walloped us, it’s fair to say, 5-1. Their second goal on the stroke of half time knocked the stuffing out of us, and they got three more through needless defensive errors in the second half. Having said that we could have been 3-0 up in the first ten minutes, and we missed three clear chances at the end - including a penalty - so we could have scored six. As I say, we’re missing that cutting edge.

On New Years Day Eastbourne deserved their draw, but they didn’t trouble our keeper until they scored in the last ten minutes. 1-1 and our only point of the holiday season. I’m going to make some changes to freshen things up: two or three players are on their way out, and two or three will be coming in. More details on all that next week.

At the beginning of the season I figured we’d need 70 points to get into the play offs. We’ve got 30 of those, after a mediocre start. So we need 40 more to get there. We’re traditionally better in the second half of the season than the first, though, so I’m still confident we can do it. We’re hoping for our injured players to come back over the next two weeks, and with the fresh blood I’m going to add, I hope that will give us the sort of momentum to get into the position this group of players wants to be in - in the top five of the division.

Next match: Beckenham (away) Saturday 6th January
Next home match: Sutton, Saturday 13th January