With summer coming to a close, and after some strong pre-season performances, Oundle started the 2025/2026 season playing away to the team that finished directly below them in the league last year, Loughborough Town 3s. With Oundle managing to do the double over Loughborough last year. Previously this fixture was a tightly contested affair, with Oundle ending up victors 2-1. However unlike last year, Oundle were delighted to find out that George Martin had paid for parking this time and so avoided a 2nd fine!

Oundle were able to boast a full complement of 16 players for the first game of the season. Loughborough on the other hand, only had enough players for the starting lineup, turning up with a mixture of youth and experience.

After a subdued warmup the game began with Oundle lining up in their familiar diamond formation, and were immediately on the back foot, with Loughborough dominating the opening exchanges, quickly winning a short corner, Youngy being called into action a couple of times early on to keep the scores level. Albi and Millan cleared up anything loose.

After weathering the initial Loughborough storm Oundle started to push forward in numbers, Loughborough left a couple of wide players forward on each Oundle attack though which had already resulted in a few 1 on 1 situations and midway through the first half the inevitable happened with Loughborough managing to squeeze a shot through and open the scoring.

The Loughborough goal appeared to have finally woken Oundle up and the game became a lot more even, Oundle creating chances of their own, Brenners shooting just wide on a couple of occasions. Oundle’s midfield showed great tenacity, nearly every Oundle attack starting with Jimmy who had turned into prime Scholes at the base of the diamond. Ian and Ben playing as fullbacks all pushing up very high to support the Oundle attacking efforts. When Jimmy was on the bench having a rest, Al filled in admirably into the deep CM role.

When Oundle won the ball on the right, the ball making its way to Tristan who ran into the D and fired the ball across, a deft touch from George (Junior) Kerr found an unmarked John Pickstone who fired home from close range to bring the scores level.

With Oundle growing into the game after their goal, it was Loughborough’s turn to dig in and defend, and when Brenners thought he had given Oundle the lead when his shot had beaten the keeper, hands went on heads when Loughborough had other ideas and cleared the ball of the line with a diving save from the defender.