It was a good all round team performance from Logica, but they still contrived to throw the lead away twice as Brixton again nicked a point with a late strike. Sandric Loriot had popped over from France to make his occasional Christmas appearance, and his quality in the middle of the park added both bite and skill. However Gallic guile was denied full MoM honours by the old head of Abbott, whose shrewd spin doctoring bowled the voters over to see him run out with the last Man of the Match Award of 2004.

Admittedly the striker had produced one of his best displays of the season, creating chances for others and coming within a whisker of claiming all three points when his trademark lob crashed back off the cross-bar. But Abbott's somewhat sordid act of appealing directly to the electorate via e-mail does not sit easily with the ageing striker's self-professed Corinthian ethos, and it was this act of gall that finally pipped any on-field acts of the Gaul.