So, settled in to the hotel at Plymouth which according to my match report is a suburb of Bristol, my roomie Mr Forrester and I took advantage of my free BT Sport subscription and watched the first part of England’s demise in The Ashes up to lunch.

That was all we watched, sleep was needed to build up strength for breakfast and what a lovely breakfast that was too. Now, it’s an hour or so to go before check-out and then a video session to see where we can break down Plymouth and ensure a 2 – 0 weekend.

By the way many thanks to Mr Wilson who commented on my “match report” error. Happy to know that he reads it so intently and I apologise to all for the error and will do my best to do better. No excuses, no remorse, just too much pressure.

Before I go on, a huge and happy birthday to ‘Jamal Jamal’ today. Don’t we all just love Social Media for keeping us up to date with all these important things. Williams the Senior has shown already that he has a lot to offer this team and is an astute signing.

What of yesterday? Well, at times we were very, very, very good and at times we were merely good. We even had one or two spells when we were perhaps only average but if I was scoring it out of ten I’d give it an eight.

Defensively we were more than good enough. The secret with this Bristol team is that they are structured and organised and if you take them out of that function then they don’t really have a Plan B. We saw that last night.

Nims was pretty much back on track, Darius was hugely effective, nice to see Jure get a start and Terry was effective off the bench. A J played decent minutes, Jaysean was quiet by his standards but still contributed a lot.

Drew was his usual bundle of energy particularly on D and those Williams boys sure do put in effective and worthwhile shifts. Fab didn’t play but led on the side-lines to great effect and it all added up to an excellent road win against a side expected to give us trouble.

Only real downside was the two techs picked up. Not sure Nims deserved his for the “flop.” After all, when you’re that size and up in the air shooting a triple it doesn’t take much to knock you off your balance.

J-Gun’s was different. Sometimes fella you just have to reign it in, look at the scoreboard and remember the referees are always right. We just seem at the moment to have almost as much trouble with the officials as the opposition.

Problem is that whilst the opposition can give you trouble you can usually beat them, it’s not very often you can beat The Refs. Something the guys should know being professional ballers. Still, the rewards for others from the techs are always worth savouring!

Now, it’s The Raiders turn to try and stop the run. On paper this was probably the easiest of the two games but given that we’ve already played once, and any little niggles will be found out by the unforgiving Pavilions floor, we must make sure we’re tuned in and ready.

I’ve read Mr Forrester’s excellent scouting report and if we follow it then we should be fine. If we don’t then woe betide them all.

I’ve even forgone the Plymouth Christmas Markets to bring you this update. Still, it’s only November and for me Christmas doesn’t start until December. Hopefully at Rocks next Friday. But, I don’t want to get ahead of myself and let’s deal with those pesky Raiders first.

They are under new management and coaching this season as has been well documented. They also have the original “Foxy” back so the guys may have to hang on to their shorts. It’ll be interesting to see what the reception we get is like this afternoon.

Quite a nice, blustery and crisp day down here in the supposedly tropical south-west. Let’s hope the guys can heat things up a little bit in “Britain’s Premier Basketball Arena” this afternoon.

Then, it’ll be another match report followed by another Chinese most probably, Mr H have done due diligence and sorted out the after-match feast which is always needed before we crash out and will the hours and miles away quickly before we return to the “propa” end of the country.

Here’s hoping and wishing that my next blog comes quickly and reports another successful afternoon in the south and we lift that 9 – 0 to double figures.