SPORTING WESSEX 1-0 BURRIDGE

Saturday 1st December

There were no blue jeans tucked into red football socks on the sidelines today. A prior engagement was keeping the Burridge gaffer Pete Lyons away from Gang Warily in Blackfield, so he couldn't see if his lads could turn over Sporting Wessex, as they had done by a goal to nil earlier in the season and maybe get some foothold on third place in the table.

So Pete made a call to his old sparring partner Birksy. They'd played together in God knows how many games during their hay-day back in the eighties, when a splash of Brute still counted for something. Birksy couldn't make it either, but his boy could. So Mat got the call and he'd have played alot more games for Burridge during the two years since he signed up if it hadn't been down to plain bad luck with injuries.

Don't think he's standing trial for pinching a jar of pickles from the local greengrocers, but still he's off to Australia to start a new life. He's already finished at work, so there'll be no more knackered sprockets or oil changes on Nissan Primeras for a while.

Standing at five-foot- eight, wearing two days stubble and never too keen at having his picture, alongside Lee Fielder who that can't be said of. The caretaker-manager partnership watching Burridge toil away on a slick green top, occasionally counter-attacking on the open spaces the wide playing surface provided. The only goal of the game came from Wessex midway through the first-half, about the same time Jamie Hewitt was forced off with a neck spasm. Burridge continued to play with spirit but chances of equalising faded with the light to winter darkness.

B.Stanfield, J.Schwodler, M.Sanderson, K.Hewitt, L.Sanderson, G.Baker, J.Hewitt (M.Reeves), J.Newman, R.Kelly, S.Schwodler, S.Hewitt