Halo Stickman

Ah yes, cheers Nolan, that’s clever – well, too clever for me

Sterling effort by Balcs and Thommo – equal best partnership of the innings and 2 very welcome batting points. I see Gloucester put us in to bat so I’m assuming the pitch was doing something. It’s a shame Weston has left the forum – hopefully only temporarily – because, amongst other things, I found his pitch reports and inside info very useful.

I reckon it's NC, MoPo and Lallana.

There’s something that I’ve been meaning to get off my chest for a while now but have been too scared because I think it means I’m not normal: I miss Barry Sanchez

Yep, Maxwell has been as useful as a cut dog so far this T20 season. What was your take on his run-out? I thought it was his fault but the Sky pundits seemed to be implicating Carbs.

116 all out chasing 155, what the f*cking hell was that all about? Inept batting. By the way, can anyone tell me why Owais Shah is no longer featuring for us in the T20 – we could certainly have done with his experience today.

BREAKING NEWS: 52 year-old fox charged with grooming baby owl at BBC garden party.

The gorgeous and saxy Jorja Chalmers.

Perhaps Lovren's been tapping him up

Nice work bletch! I’ve been watching it during my lunch-break and have found it to be quite mesmerising, albeit in a rather depressing way at the moment. I’m looking forward to seeing it in action when we start signing players. Definitely a very useful resource imo; I’m in; it’s a yes from me.

Don’t suppose any of you festival-goers caught Bryan Ferry’s set on the West Holts stage? Jorja Chalmers on saxophone is simply gorgeous imo!

"Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." Nothing like a Churchill quote to brighten up dark days.

a) Transfer kitty about £50million and rising. b) Club on sound financial footing. c) Some decent PL players still here. d) Some highly promising young players from top-rated academy system. e) Excellent training facilities, decent stadium, nice area of UK (all factors for attracting new players). f) Realistic expectations, i.e. owners aren’t demanding top four finish. All things considered, I doubt many managers have been given such a good opportunity to build their own team.

Let’s look on the bright side fellow Saints, it’s not our mums and dads, spouses or partners, kids or best mates deserting us, it’s just a bunch of blokes most of us have never met who happen to have played for our club these past few years but now want to play for someone else. All we need to do is replace them with some different blokes who want to play for us. They might be better, they might be worse, either way most of us supporters will still be here next summer when we can watch it happen all over again. The Beautiful Game; the Premier Experience; the Southampton Way; Football, bloody hell; Money, Money, Money – it’s one of those, innit?

Essex 2nd Innings 135 all out. Hants win by 470 runs! I think we can call that a comprehensive victory.

Vince out for 240; that’s 1046 county championship runs for him this season – first county player to pass the 1000 run mark this year in both Div 1 and Div 2.

So Essex 122 all out, Hants 24/2, 10 wickets fallen in a couple of hours, Vince comes to the wicket and scores a century at better than a run a ball! What a player!

Excellent news! COYS!

Not strictly a commentator (although if you lived in our house you’d find that f*cking hard to believe), towards the end of the England match, Mrs Stickman screamed something I hadn’t heard for a while: “For god’s sake just whack it in!”

Continuity, innit?

Excellent last day battling performance. Great to see Carbs and Maxwell in the runs, with Ervine and Bates seeing us safely home. Very pleased with that!

Weather looks okay, so I’m anticipating a long day of struggling against Saeed Ajmal’s off spin, I’m afraid - still, a chance for our chaps to show their mettle! I will be very happy if we manage to save this match.

Sisyphean

107/1 to 219 all out. Very disappointing.