An embarrassing performance by Mill Hill saw them squander the opportunity to retain their second spot in the lead. Their second consecutive defeat came against a competent but eminently beatable Witney side and exposed the kind of defensive fragility which contributed to so many maulings last season.

The absence of Mike Solomons and David Evans deprived the team of a total of eighty years of experience and it showed as the visitors' lively forward combination cruised through a ramshackle back line at will.

After a long Christmas break - which their opponents had spent in the gym - the back four were as rusty as Evo's Ford Escort and as full as holes. Witney's first two goals were absolute gifts.

Mill Hill, however, have grown accustomed to slow starts (it's the one thing we practice in training) so had the confidence to start passing the ball around.

However what came next was so out of the ordinary it's likely to figure on a Question of Sport's what happened next round While Emlyn Hughes and Bill Beaumont would probably have been able to predict Mark Hellicar's one-on-one miss, they would never have guessed he would score the next one. The watching youths dropped their stolen cans of strongbow in amazement later in the game when Hellicar scored a second but a hatrick - rated by William Hill as slightly less probable than Osama bin Laden converting to Buddhism - didn't quite materialize.

Ryan Schlanders scored twice, including a reverse stick finish that Nick Warr embarrassingly failed to replicate. He also missed a clear one on one, which Warr was able to copy (To be fair, Sclanders did come up with the fine excuse of snapping his stick in two just before he shot.) The match was decided by the sending off of Mark Scut, which disrupted the game enough for Mill Hill to lose momentum and concentration and the game, 6-5.