‘Yeah, yeah.’ With a roll of my eyes and a chuckle, I take my midfield position just behind the site of the face-off, marked by a midline and a circle at its direct centre. The ball is placed on an X in the middle of the circle, at which the face-off specialist from Boulder and our specialist, Andy, are each crouched in what’s best described as a lopsided squat, crosses parallel to the ground. Andy’s like me, never been the biggest player on the roster – medium height; doesn’t carry some crazy quantity of muscle. The Boulder guy is the picture of his team’s home city, about the size of a small lighthouse. Dull eyes the colour of steel glare past Andy and shoot lasers at me from behind his helmet grille. If this man stick checked me, he might take my entire arm off while he’s at it. I pray he’s a FOGO – face-off, get off, meaning he’ll be subbed off once he’s done his thing – because if he isn’t, and he stays on to play, I’d consider it a miracle if all my appendages were still attached to my body by the end of this game.

The whistle blows, and Boulder and Andy are arm to arm. He pushes, Andy skirts around, knees scrabbling against the turf, trying his best to counter the massive opponent in the bid for the ball that sits between the both of them. Andy, thankfully, is just barely able to flick upward and get the ball in the air. I pluck it right up, look hard for an attacker, and then I hear a reliable, ‘BALL!’ I don’t give it a second thought before launching the ball his way.

Hot Rod Wilson zooms away with the goods, cradling it to keep it from falling out of the net on his way up to the goal. His stick moves in an arc of silver and pink owing to the Peppa Pig stickers his kid’s put all over the crosse. As much as we give him shit about it, he’s fast – he whips the ball straight towards the goal mere seconds into the game. Unfortunately, it’s just short of the goal by maybe an inch.

One of Boulder’s attackers makes his way towards our crease in the tenth minute, but our defender JJ is fast to sneak in a stick slap, causing the ball to fly out towards Drew. He snaps it out of the air and feeds it to Connor on midfield.

‘OPEN!’ I yell.