Debut

With the Lakeside Stadium pitch still having its pointless corporate-sponsored undersoil heating installed, the club's first professional matches would be taking place away from home. Our first journey took us to Wales, and the imposing Ninian Park Number Two, which dwarfs Cardiff City's nearby stadium of a similar name.

Heath FC, of the Xtreme Football Association, were a team to be afraid of. Fresh off the back of a club record 6-0 victory against DiggerDagger FC, and currently ranked the 11th best team in the world, the green recruits of Hampton were sure to be a pushover for them. I had three main goals for the fixture:

• Get our first team up to a match-fit state before the NFA season kicks off;
• Complete the match with our pride intact;
• Not to allow Heath FC to break their club record victory for a second game in a row.
  

We made a promising attacking start, but it was Heath who made the breakthrough in the 18th minute when Brazillian striker Otacilio Neto appropriately earned his 18th goal of the pre-season campaign. Steve Lekoelea managed to shrug off Serginho's midfield challenge, and threaded a ball through to Neto on the edge of the 18-yard box. Neto managed to muscle his way clear of Joe Devera's half-hearted challenge, and placed the ball beyond Dudek into the far corner of the goal.

It was a goal which threatened to open the floodgates, but much to their credit, the Hampton defence stood firm. It was a defensive display which drew the plaudits of opposition manager Gareth Hughes in his post-match press conference, and it at least managed to take the attention away from what was a disappointing Hampton attacking display.

Truth be told, much of the club's training thus far has been defensive-based. With no full-time coaches on the Hampton books yet, my training sessions have mostly been pretty basic: something along the lines of "Try not to **** it up". Our strike force hasn't had much of a chance to work together thus far, which is why our main attacking option seemed to avoid pumping the ball long in the general direction of ageing Marian Pahars, who didn't have his goalscoring boots on for this match.

A 1-0 final score was a pretty positive result for us, and a bit of work on our attacking play could soon yield some goals - and who knows, maybe even a victory.