Duncan Barkes

Harsh word.

A lot of men don't like the sound of that word.

But the sun was impotent.

It had no potency.

It represented no threat to us.

So those of us who saw the sun this morning...

early because it was a 12 30 kickoff come back to that thought to ourselves i think it's just three layers you know i do i think it's going to be it's a it's a t-shirt a sweatshirt and a coat it was four layers i had four layers on because i'm not as stupid as i used to be but i was still frozen i didn't bring gloves a scarf and a hat i wish i had but i got so cold i

that when I finally got home two hours after the final whistle, I had to put on clothes that weren't cold because my clothes were still cold.

I don't know how the players managed it, especially players who were born and brought up in a totally different climate two hours.

I mean, take...

you know poor old Gus Caballero got quite badly crocked they were tasty those two fullbacks that Hull had but Caballero what does he think playing in a temperature like that I don't know whether you get temperatures like that during the football season in Paraguay or in Brazil but um oh you know short-sleeved shirts and the subs were all warming up wearing thermal tights but of course you can wear thermal tights playing a game of football but it's not a good look

So the sun and Pompey's attacking efforts, their final shot just lacked any meat.

Now our buildups, I hope you agree.

I don't think I need to go on too much about it.

Our buildups often were very good, sharp, sometimes fast, sometimes quite intricate.

I didn't know that Adams would have a neat back heel, but he did one right in front of me and it worked.

It came off.

It was a nice little triangle move.

We did a lot of good triangle moves in wide areas and they pretty much 99% came off, which is good.

And we were good across the park.