One problem with hockey from a narratological perspective is that each game is decided by such a small number of events, most of which are matters of inches one way or the other. A fraction more luck, or as some people insist on calling it, skill, and a 0-1 loss becomes a 2-1 win. But when we think back, our view of the game is completely skewed by the scoreline. You can utterly dominate a game you lose 0-1.

This is not what happened on Saturday. No Spencer really knows what happened on Saturday. Everyone wandered off the pitch in a slight daze, aware that they had run hard, but with a vague sense, all the same, of never having been quite part of the game.

Why? You kind of want to look at the warm-up, or at training (which was, last week, a festival of incompetence) but we've all played brilliantly (or in Martin Clarke's case 'ok') after bad-warm-ups and nights out and whatever else. But we're humans and we want to tell stories, especially at the moment where the culture is frankly obsessed with the idea that everything must be explained through stories. So we make the connections and so on. But really, when the sample size is small, we have no more idea than some drunken peasant whose cow has died and who blames it on the witch. (Did you know that Adam Evans is a witch?)

This doesn't mean 'Don't train'. The connection is there over the season, as anyone subjected to the years of regression via 45-minute sessions on half a pitch at midnight at Battersea Park will remember, but it's hard to draw out lessons from one game. Somehow, without playing badly, Spencer weren't quite ever in the game and Canterbury were.

Eli Manning looks really like Matt Davidson.

It's bloody cold. I bet I get to the pitch tonight and it's too frosty to train. I'll need cheering up when I get back. I'll watch this. If you need cheering up, you should watch it too. It's the bomb: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-t494avlyA

Also, I thought it was funny that there was a genre of romance novels based on time-travelling Navy SEALs meeting up with Vikings; I still do, but I am not sure it's as funny as the fact that there' a whole genre of murder mysteries based in the world of fly fishing. For instance:

Victoria Houston
This woman has spun a mystery series of lovable, warm characters who live in Wisconsin and fish (fly and Muskie predominately) while dealing with the unexpected demise of persons somehow tied to their tiny, backwoods community. The protagonists are Llewellyn Ferris (Lew); a strong capable woman in her 50s who serves as the town’s sheriff. A devout fly fishing enthusiast, she has taken under her wing the town’s former dentist—who also doubles as a forensic specialist when deputized—teaching him the wiles of her fly fishing trade. There is a romantic spark between them that softly develops over time and circumstance making reading the series in order a pleasure. The other predominate character, and my favorite, is Ray Pradt, a loose, charismatic adventurer who has slyly opted to sit on the sidelines of life—but secretly has the life we all dream of—who is a guide, tracker, grave digger, dependable friend and stalwart trustee to all who need his help. His skill in gathering crime scene data always proves invaluable, despite a host of accompanying vanities.