With a strong contingent of players set to return from an intensive Italian training camp, the future looks bright for RBBFC II...

Team: Romain Eyssartier, Benjamin Thom, Fernando Alguacil, Benjamin Thieffry, Mark Pellegry, Antoine Gary, Tarik Si M'Hammed, William Ouellette, Thomas Golightly, Daniele Mineo, Charlie Deschamps, Dani Yugueros.

A sunny day greeted the home side as they embarked upon a new season with some new faces, but with the same old RBBFC spirit. Everything was going swimmingly, until our man on the inside (Ryan), was pulled aside and identified as a NATO informant. Despite his pleas to the referee, Ryan was barred from playing due to having an ID more fake than that of a 15-year old in a Wolverhampton pub ordering 'three pints of snake bite please'. In the spirit of compromise the ref agreed to tell Ryan's wife that he had indeed played, and that the two-hour round trip from Mons was actually well worth it as Ryan displayed a 'performance without any noticeable errors'.

One man down, the mighty RBBFC prepared for battle. Unfortunately the battle cry before KO was a bit more confused than normal with new players and old players producing varying sounds that surely struck fear into the hearts of LTC II. Due to LTC's confusion, RBBFC dominated for the first five-minutes with impeccable passing football but at this point the good news ended.

A floated free kick with a near-post flick on and an expertly laid offside trap, led to LTC tapping in at the far post. VAR was called for but those in the buvette were more focused on Jupiler than their tv screens. LTC than rapidly made it 2-0 with a first-time finish from a decent through ball.

Two small lookalike players were using their agility to dominate possession and the whites resorted to fouling them in an effort to slow them down. Captain and all-round-annoyance Tarik achieved the best foul of the lot, which brought a yellow card and a curled effort into the bottom corner to make it 3-0 LTC.

At half time the message was received that now was the time to show our true spirit. Win or lose, what mattered was the performance. True enough the second half showed more intensity, more communication, and better passing football. All it lacked was a well-deserved goal, with RBBFC coming close once or twice but drawing good saves from the opposition goalkeeper.

There was still time for one more goal for LTC II, but the second half performance highlighted that with the right organisation, communication, intensity and team spirit, this team can go far.

What on day one of the season is a bunch of individuals with new and old players playing out of position (or on the bench- thanks for coming Ryan), will quickly become a cohesive team that works together and wins together. With a strong contingent of players set to return from an intensive Italian training camp, the future looks bright for RBBFC II and I can confidently predict that they were set to win 5-0 in the next fixture...true story?

Your reporter - Ben Thom