There were shenanigans in Ireland tonight as Pompey lost a three goal lead to be held to a 3-3 draw at Sligo Rovers.
Paul Cook's men coasted into the break with a commanding lead thanks to an early goal from Gary Roberts and a brace by Conor Chaplin. This didn't really come as a surprise given that Sligo's first half team consisted of ex-team mates of Gavin Peers for whom the testimonial was being played for.
The referee proved that officials also need a pre-season as he failed to spot that the hosts were playing with twelve men for a time, one of those being former Pompey winger Kieran Djilali.
Sligo put out an improved side after the break but it took a soft penalty decision to get them back into it. Tom Davies was adjudged to have fouled Phil Roberts in the box and Peers, the man of the moment, scored the resulting spot kick.
Pompey threw away their two goal lead in the last five minutes when Kieran Sadler scored twice in quick succession as a match that featured 52 different players ended in an entertaining draw.
Of course, there will be some Pompey fans who go into meltdown after this meaningless result but the match was barely a friendly and more like a kick about with some old mates. Absolutely nothing should be read into this result, especially as Cook tried a number of trialists during the game.
Among them were goalkeepers Michael Crowe and Eric Grimes who have been at Ipswich and Leeds respectively, Chris Sessegnon who played at full back for Whitehawk last season and the final trialist to make an appearance was a 19-year-old Belgian by the name of Elyse Boris Konsiembo.
Undoubtedly most of these trialists will never make the full squad when the season begins but there are usually one or two who will impress and there may be more to come as pre-season progresses.
In the meantime, Pompey fans can look forward to their next friendly at Bohemians on Saturday if they haven't topped themselves after the result tonight!