Off the back of a preseason series of thumpings – either one way or another – the Purple People Eaters embarked on their long-awaited cup run over at a very well kept pitch in the middle of gentrification central, also known as Balham, versus a tough Sinjuns Grammarians opponent.

Last season’s captain Tom Nichols returned acting in that role in place of James Evans-Rong who was getting his obligatory mid-season holiday out of the way early so he can focus on the league. Safe to say, OTFC couldn’t have started better, immediately breaking and looking aggressive. Also safe to say, there was going to be a twist in the tale somewhere, with Dan Jackson at CB falling for his own delightful dummy and playing through ball straight to their striker after 4 minutes. 1-0 Sinjuns.

The less said about that half after that point the better, despite a few dangerous attacks from Tiffs, we went in 4-0 down at the break.

The second half was much more positive, with the giants in purple pulling one back early on, Tommo playing through Chippy Leach to coolly finish. Tommo soon after found himself through on goal and decided his nickname should also be ‘Chippy’, unfortunately only to spoon the ball over the crossbar – rectified soon after with another assist, selflessly passing to allow the senior Leach brother (Danny) to get on the score sheet.

Some would say this was poetic – especially given the 4-person Leach fan club on the sidelines breaking the record for the largest 2s crowd size since 2015. Similarly impressive were the starts for two debutants, Luke Scott-Crowley and Gonzalo Allende – Luke in particular being an honorary member of the Leach fan club having known Leach Sr since their original Tiffin days. Two bright stars in the future OTFC line up we feel…

While all this poeticism was going on our opposition scored 4 more, making the final score 8-2, ending the 2s LOB cup run for this season before it had really got started. To be fair to Sinjuns they scored a couple of quality goals, but I’m sure they wouldn’t disagree they were gifted some as well. You can give us the thank you letter when we see you later this year in the league, gents.