A quick message to the courageous members of GroupThink F.C., playing tomorrow night short two of its bedrock players, including the captain. A quick message to the remaining members of the team, and the two fill-ins they’ve organised, who are hopefully of a lower standard than the players they’re replacing. (Wouldn’t filling-in with better players be cheating somehow? Certainly against the spirit of the competition.)

That message: take it easy, guys. There’s no need to risk painful injuries. If you play too hard you could twist an ankle. You could be involved in some kind of horrible collision. If you’re standing with your back to the goal and an opponent belts the ball at you, for god sake duck out of the way. Is one goal saved really worth the potential of testicular suffering? No, it isn’t. Not this week. Maybe next week, when your captain returns, but not now.

Now is a time for practising new moves, new strategies – seeing what works, what doesn’t. If you find something that looks promising, that seems to be working, file that information away for future reference – and go and try something different. Let’s concentrate this week on exploring strategies that have never worked in the past and may never work in the future. Let’s make absolutely certain that they’re a bad idea before we abandon them completely.

Also, Ant will probably be giving you useful directions from the goals, because he can see what’s going on. Whilst listening to him is usually a good idea, this week let’s just see what happens if you don’t. This way you’ll be able to have confidence in the future that following Ant’s suggestions is a good idea – and you’ll know that because you tried the alternative, and lost abysmally. See? Then we’ll know.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD don’t let our first victory be the first game I’m forced to miss. Okay? Guys?