What with work and, well, generally life getting in the way, I've not been able to write up a league fixture since the seeding games of last year. Back then, we were aiming not to go down a division and to the relatively easy games of last season. Amazingly, quite the opposite ended up happening and we've found ourselves effectively promoted a second time!

This does mean that our games are going to be challenging and even if they haven't been going our way, challenging is good for player development. And who should we kick off this New Year with but the team sitting at the top of the table: a second Ashford Town Juniors.

Now, these aren't the team that were vying for top spot with us last season but one that, until recently, was playing at the very top of the league. Due to seeding, they've actually found themselves to have dropped down a division and this is probably hence why they've been winning pretty much all of their games.

The thing is, watching the game, you would have seen that we were perfectly competitive. Sure, there were moments when Stef had to make a legendary recovery (and I really do mean legendary) or Adam had to chase a long pass to safety, but we were otherwise looking pretty solid most of the time. There was some great passing and combination play, with Dan, at right back making excellent overhead passes down the wing for Fin to run onto. The midfield three, being various combinations of Ryan, Matt, George, Tom and Patrik, worked the ball around and built an attack, rather than just flinging the ball forward to Kian and hoping for the best. No, instead, we saw the ball moving to the wings, overlaps by Dan and Adam, and switches to find space – just like some of the training sessions this season. It was good to watch. Really good.

Alas, just two blunders in the first half resulted in situations from which there was no recovery. I won't go into detail because I know there are players kicking themselves over them but, hey, that's football. Everyone can make a mistake!

I'd also add "especially linos" to this sentiment too for the opposition's was rather flag happy and denied Patrik an absolute scorcher of a goal. His flag went up and down a few times and I think the ref started to make his own mind up in the second half.

To be fair to the Pumas, although heads might have gone down a little after the second goal, they held up until half time. The half time talk, lead by the players themselves, was positive and they really came back fighting with three chances opening up in just the first five minutes. But that was the story of the half, I'm afraid – lots of chances. Indeed, there were enough to pull the game back and more, and I guess we were simply unfortunate not to be able to capitalise on them. Shots went wide, hit posts, got saved and pinged over the bar. It just wasn't our day.

But the good news is that this team is surely beatable and it was clear the Pumas were frustrating them as whilst the Ashford side went home with three points, they also took two yellow cards. We have seen them once before, at the start of the season proper, and such is the way the season's constructed, we'll see them again. COYP!