T’WAS the last match before Christmas in this pantomime season, for which we assembled on the set of Treasure Island, otherwise known as the Fanzone in the Premier Suite.

Festive preparations were well under way and all we wanted for Christmas was three points against the Shrimpers from Southend.

We hoped that Keith Hill had a cunning plan to outwit Sol Campbell and his first act was to start with Jake Wright and Thibaud Verlinden.

As happens so often, Southend hadn’t read the script and had a plot of their own, coming at us from the first minute.

In this season of goodwill, our defence gifted too many free headers in the box and Harry Lennon put them one up.

For most of the first half, Southend were the better team but we came up with two great strikes from Joe Dodoo and Luke Murphy respectively.

In the second half, Daryl Murphy took advantage of a ‘he’s behind you’ moment to rob Tim Dieng and finish superbly for what turned out to be a welcome, valuable winner.

We never do things the easy way and we gifted another free header to ensure a nail-biting last 10 minutes.

But all’s well that ends well. Southend can count themselves unfortunate, but we have played better and lost.

The EFL seem determined to retain their role as villains by insisting Liverpool play their Carabao Cup quarter-final with their young players and, more worryingly, is their punishment for Macclesfield missing a match in all-too familiar circumstances to what we went through last season.

On a more positive note, it was good to see the work being done off the field to restore our respect and credibility following all the misdeeds leading to the administration. Sharon Brittan and Emma Beaugeard’s visit to Forest Green to sort out the Christian Doidge debacle and repair our damaged reputation can only be seen as a good thing going forward. There must be hundreds of business relationships soured by the events that took us into administration and these all need to be rebuilt.

After the match, it was party time as the club held their first Christmas cracker party in the Premier Suite. It was a good opportunity to meet, talk to and get autographs and selfies with the players, management, Sharon Brittan and Emma Beaugeard.

Now we look forward to our Boxing Day reunion with Phil Parkinson.