Hello? Is that The Sussex Coach Company? I’m just checking whether you’ve got an open-top bus available in late April?

Alright, everyone. Chillax. Christ knows we enjoyed last night, a last-gasp winner in a Sussex derby, group hugs with the fans, singing all the way back to the station. But let’s keep our feet on the ground. No titles are won in August. We’ve still got 95.2% of the league season to play.

No, actually. Sod it. Let’s lose our collective heads. We’ve taken a savage budget cut, got a whole new team to keep Marcus Sablier company, new management, and we are bossing the league. We’re only being kept off the top by virtue of Hastings – chuffing Hastings – having the downright cunning to position themselves earlier in the alphabet than we did. We should instantly rename ourselves AAA Lewes and sue the Isthmian League until the tables are reprinted. These are salad days.

It didn’t start too promisingly last night, when we arrived at Bognor’s ground to find that Hamilton Antonio had knackered himself in the warm-up. No surprise, when you took a look at Bognor’s dust bowl of a pitch. If it were any drier, Lenny Henry would be filming a Comic Relief appeal on it.

Alfie Allen was hoiked off the Game of Thrones set to take his place in midfield and we were otherwise unchanged. We started in pretty much the same fashion as we did against Chatham too, all energy and bustle and threatening to tear them a new one down the wings.

Talking of tearing a new one, it wasn’t too long before right-back Ben Mundele was clutching at his hamstring, forcing yet another unexpected change with Parish Muirhead (side note: we’ve signed some wonderfully named players this season) thrust into the action. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this coincided with our wobbliest spell of the game, with Toby Bull and the back four kept busy for a good 10-15 minutes.

Nevertheless, it was Lewes who should have gone in ahead at half-time. Just before they got a chug on the Lucozade, Shae Hutchinson cut off his wing and thwacked a shot off the underside of the bar. The ball bounced down at pace and hit the keeper on his arse, where it bobbled onto the post again, before he finally clutched it in his paws, the lucky sod.

The second half was definitely rattier. The boys continued to put in a proper shift, no more so than Matty Warren, who dropped into right-back to cover the injured Mundele, but there wasn’t much to trouble either keeper. On the odd occasion we did break free, Bognor’s bothersome little number 4 dragged the runner down, somehow avoiding a booking despite three or four similar fouls. Perhaps the referee was blinded by the dust?

To be honest, the terrace chatter was focusing on settling for a point when the winner arrived. Sub Malacahi Morris fed a ball into Eddie Allsopp, who trapped it like a bag of sand and then arrowed a firm shot towards the bottom corner.

I wrote last season how my favourite sound was that half-second of silence as a goalbound shot heads towards the target, but I was wrong. My favourite noise is the sound of the net rippling immediately after that silence, not least because my view of that bottom corner was obstructed by three Stodgebusters.

If any further confirmation were needed that the ball had gone in, the flailing limbs of the school-holiday bolstered Youth Wing confirmed it was a goal. We can confirm no Stodgebusters were hurt during the making of this celebration. Well apart from the black eye PJ got from his other half, when he came home late at night smelling of Lynx Africa…

So, two games, six points, no goals conceded, and all the pre-season pub mithering has suddenly been replaced by boundless optimism.

There’s a long, long way to go. But we’ve put down a deposit on the open-top bus. Just in case.

Lewes: Bull, Mundele (Muirhead), Kaiser, Puemo, Enkh, Warren, Allen, Sablier (Morris), Allsopp (Swaby), Hutchinson, Bassett (Jeffrey).

Unused subs: None.

Supporters club man of the match: Matty Warren. Outstanding both in midfield and when we had to supply teacher at right-back.