Sturminster Marshall played their first ever Bournemouth League fixture after transferring from the Dorset County League and opened their campaign with a win.

After arriving at the game at Somerford, the team were well aware that this was to be a tough battle against physical opposition. The pitch was drier than Mahatma Gandhi's flip-flops and far from flat. However, the Stur team started fairly brightly attempting to play their football on the floor, although it was a difficult task.

Somewhat against the run of play, Twynham went through on goal after a missed tackle and buried the ball past the despairing Talbot.

At this point, the away side really upped their game and attempted to play the ball about even more, in spite of the conditions. And it was through a fantastic team move that the scores were brought level. Link-up across the midfield saw Logan and Mete pick out Davies wide on the left. The young winger whipped the ball back across the area and Jones sold his man down the river with a cunning dummy, allowing Gage the time and space to pick out the bottom corner from just inside the Twynham box.

After this Stur grew further into the game and a few minutes later, a direct ball from Mete found Wood pressurising the centre-back, forcing him into a mistake. The striker then very unselfishly squared the ball for Gage to beat his man and finish again, hitting it low and across the keeper.

The half was marred by what appeared to be little more than handbags between Jones and a home defender resulted in the defender turning what would have been little more than a yellow into a red through dissent. Half time 2-1.

As had been mentioned in 'Grandad' James Foster's team talk, once the Twynham heads were lost, this game was always likely to get nasty, and this proved to be the case. The second half had little chance of becoming a spectacle because late and reckless challenges dominated the second period. Yet there was an opportunity to add to the score line; after Jones had rounded the keeper and proceeded to lift the ball high and wide from a tight angle, and Gage missed out on his hat-trick after putting it over from a free-kick, Warrener went through on goal after some more lovely link-up and some dodgeball-like weaving from the oncoming tackles (if you can call them that!) and calmly slotted it home to effectively take Stur out of reach in this contest.

A positive result and a great start to the campaign but more importantly a strong performance and some good football played despite the attempts of the opposition. We will hope to build on this at Holt on Wednesday evening.