Dour professionalism is something Mill Hill have never aspired to. One-Nil to the Mill Hill is a chant which has not rattled between the rusty fencing of Compton astro for many a year. Instead, the team are entertainers. Sometimes the performances are funny, sometimes tragic, but rarely boring.

With their cavalier attitude to defence and attack, the team made that point clearly on their visit to Witney. With a 1hr 40m journey each way, they were travelling for almost twice the duration of the game so every second counted. (Except obviously the half-hour before the game, used by some teams for last minute practice, but spent by Mill Hill in lampooning the older,weaker members of the team) Three-zero to the opposition at half time, a scoreline which did little to reflect the pattern of the game, did nothing to dispirit the intrepid XI. The goals had been well taken though not spectacular and neither Dan nor Evo had passed directly to the opposition centre forward yet. Nor had Ryan scored. It was far from being a typical encounter.

Stand in captain Craig, breathless from his half-time team talk, began the fightback, pouncing on a short corner. Then Apay, who hadn't previously realised that games had a first half, decided to get stuck in, finishing twice to level the scores. He also managed to club one of the defenders around the head in a Streetfighter style special swinging, spinning, falling move.

Debutant Brian deserves credit too for stepping up a level and tormenting the opposition right back. His fluffy beard may not be up to scratch but he showed a Hobbit-like tenacity on the wing. Armed with a couple of pieces of lambas bread and some Elven rope I fancy he could smuggle the one true hockey ball into the jaws of Mount Doom itself.

The fact that Witney scored two more did something to take the gloss of the comeback, but, as Ryan constantly reminds us, we are in search of beautiful hockey, not wins.

And on the subject of Ryan, he's in the middle of the kind of goal drought that would make the surface of Mars look moist - his shooting is so inaccurate that the springboks no long cower in fear behind the lamp-posts of Ealing when he passes. Two games without a goal and it's starting to look as though he may have exhausted himself in his efforts to perpetuate the Schlanders bloodline. Solly's gnarled hands are already starting to close around the top-scorers' cup that's been stored alongside a boyhood stamp collection in his attic for decades and, without some heavy scoring next week, Pete Lazlett could be wielding a Capello-like axe against his veteran star when he returns from holiday in Italy.