Saturday
Last Wednesday Shahid Kendrick Jeremy and I went to watch Singapore play Malaysia at National Stadium. The match was quite poor as Singapore kept losing possession. Malaysia was slightly better but couldn't score as well. Luckily we were spared the agony of watching another 30 minutes of mundane football as they went straight to penalties after 90 min. Singapore won the shoot-out 5-4, the hero being goalie Lionel Lewis who saved the Malaysian captain's spot kick.
On the way home Shahid saw his friends from SRJC at Kallang MRT. His friends asked if he was interested to play 11 v 11 match on Saturday. So Shahid went about to organise the team and ask people to be available for the match. I talked to Chiang about the opposition and was given the impression that they were not as strong as our last opposition. We had lost our previous game 2-0 and was hoping that we would break our losing run of 1 game. I knew that the opposition were from Montfort so I sent an sms to Swee asking whether he was going to play. He replied no and so I wasn't expecting to see him there.
I was late so I didn't meet up with the rest at Hougang Interchange and went straight from home instead. I was surprised by the good turn out. There was 14 of us altogether. Notable absentees were Jeremy (right foot was still bandaged), Hanquan (couldn't make the 4.30pm kickoff) and Wai San (replaced by twin bro). But according to our scout Chiang we would have no problems with the opposition. So we were still chatting happily while our opponents were getting ready and warming up.
Captain Kendrick announced the team. I was assigned to be the right back. Defending wasn't my forte; I think that if Hanquan was around he would have my place. That would make a big difference I guess. Anyway we had a bad start, conceding a soft goal within 2 minutes. I was caught out of position many times and struggled to keep pace with the quicker opposition attackers. I went off halfway in the first half because I got tired of defending and was replaced by Ho Teck.
I looked over to the opposition bench and saw a familiar face. Swee did turn up after all. I went to kaopeh him for telling me he wasn't coming. He was also surprised to see me there I guess. Anyway he went on to the pitch shortly and remained there till to the end of the match. I also went back towards the end of half time replacing Mus and spent a minute as striker and touched the ball once.
We were down 1-4 at half-time. Not very encouraging but we broke our scoring duck. Captain Kendrick was willing us on, reminding us that we weren't lousy but just that we weren't used to playing on the field. Most of us had grouses with the opposition being arrogant and were determined to come back in the second half. I went over to Swee and he told me that his whole team were unhappy with Kok Wai's rough ways. Well I can fully emphathise with that.
Anyway I was the designated right-back again for second half. Our first 15 minutes was good. I felt that I was linking up quite well with Sufiyan at the right side of the park. We put pressure on our opponents and our passing wasn't bad. We scored once again and there was really belief that we could get something more out of the game. There were also a couple of half chances that we wasted and that was the closest we were going to get the whole half.
Our momentum was broken down when Shicai was involved in a collision with one of the opponents. The opponent was injured and had to be helped off the field. From then on our inital bright start fizzled and the second half became just like the first. Sufiyan was switched to the left flank and Shicai and I hardly clicked. I was kept getting caught in position by the hard running attackers as they swarmed up in attack.
In the end I managed to con Qinyao to switch position with me. My last position on the pitch was right midfield where I hardly had any possession of the ball. Feijie came on to replace me and I spent the last 10 minutes resting on the sidelines. The final score was 7-2 to our opponents. It was more likely to be 17-2 if not for the colossus Harish. He made many timely interceptions and was unanimously our man of the match. The results were fair as we were really outplayed. I thought Swee was having a good match just like most of his team mates. In contrast we were poor and often had no idea what to do with the ball when we had the possession. Our defence was weak (bar Harish) and reckless and often left the keeper exposed.
We really missed Jeremy. The previous game we played he controlled the whole game as a keeper and defenders were more confident playing in front of him. No disrespect to the other two who had played goalie yesterday but Jeremy was really in the class of his own. We need to find someone capable of replacing him as he couldn't be playing for us after he went to Ireland.
The team's morale was down for a while after the match. Things had not gone according to plan and we extended our losing streak to 2 games. Kok Wai was harping on the childish opposition player known as no 18. Generally our team felt that the opponents were arrogant. But if we were the winning side, we could be the same too. However it doesn't seemed likely in the near future unless we fixed our leaky defence, non-existent midfield and less than confident attack.
We recovered from our defeat very well. We were laughing and joking very soon after that. We had planned to take photos of the winning team but ended up with the losing team's one. Never mind. Captain Kendrick had already asked us to make ourselves available for more field practices before the next game. We will come back stronger from the defeat. In the mean time we can only dream of our first victory.
On the way home Shahid saw his friends from SRJC at Kallang MRT. His friends asked if he was interested to play 11 v 11 match on Saturday. So Shahid went about to organise the team and ask people to be available for the match. I talked to Chiang about the opposition and was given the impression that they were not as strong as our last opposition. We had lost our previous game 2-0 and was hoping that we would break our losing run of 1 game. I knew that the opposition were from Montfort so I sent an sms to Swee asking whether he was going to play. He replied no and so I wasn't expecting to see him there.
I was late so I didn't meet up with the rest at Hougang Interchange and went straight from home instead. I was surprised by the good turn out. There was 14 of us altogether. Notable absentees were Jeremy (right foot was still bandaged), Hanquan (couldn't make the 4.30pm kickoff) and Wai San (replaced by twin bro). But according to our scout Chiang we would have no problems with the opposition. So we were still chatting happily while our opponents were getting ready and warming up.
Captain Kendrick announced the team. I was assigned to be the right back. Defending wasn't my forte; I think that if Hanquan was around he would have my place. That would make a big difference I guess. Anyway we had a bad start, conceding a soft goal within 2 minutes. I was caught out of position many times and struggled to keep pace with the quicker opposition attackers. I went off halfway in the first half because I got tired of defending and was replaced by Ho Teck.
I looked over to the opposition bench and saw a familiar face. Swee did turn up after all. I went to kaopeh him for telling me he wasn't coming. He was also surprised to see me there I guess. Anyway he went on to the pitch shortly and remained there till to the end of the match. I also went back towards the end of half time replacing Mus and spent a minute as striker and touched the ball once.
We were down 1-4 at half-time. Not very encouraging but we broke our scoring duck. Captain Kendrick was willing us on, reminding us that we weren't lousy but just that we weren't used to playing on the field. Most of us had grouses with the opposition being arrogant and were determined to come back in the second half. I went over to Swee and he told me that his whole team were unhappy with Kok Wai's rough ways. Well I can fully emphathise with that.
Anyway I was the designated right-back again for second half. Our first 15 minutes was good. I felt that I was linking up quite well with Sufiyan at the right side of the park. We put pressure on our opponents and our passing wasn't bad. We scored once again and there was really belief that we could get something more out of the game. There were also a couple of half chances that we wasted and that was the closest we were going to get the whole half.
Our momentum was broken down when Shicai was involved in a collision with one of the opponents. The opponent was injured and had to be helped off the field. From then on our inital bright start fizzled and the second half became just like the first. Sufiyan was switched to the left flank and Shicai and I hardly clicked. I was kept getting caught in position by the hard running attackers as they swarmed up in attack.
In the end I managed to con Qinyao to switch position with me. My last position on the pitch was right midfield where I hardly had any possession of the ball. Feijie came on to replace me and I spent the last 10 minutes resting on the sidelines. The final score was 7-2 to our opponents. It was more likely to be 17-2 if not for the colossus Harish. He made many timely interceptions and was unanimously our man of the match. The results were fair as we were really outplayed. I thought Swee was having a good match just like most of his team mates. In contrast we were poor and often had no idea what to do with the ball when we had the possession. Our defence was weak (bar Harish) and reckless and often left the keeper exposed.
We really missed Jeremy. The previous game we played he controlled the whole game as a keeper and defenders were more confident playing in front of him. No disrespect to the other two who had played goalie yesterday but Jeremy was really in the class of his own. We need to find someone capable of replacing him as he couldn't be playing for us after he went to Ireland.
The team's morale was down for a while after the match. Things had not gone according to plan and we extended our losing streak to 2 games. Kok Wai was harping on the childish opposition player known as no 18. Generally our team felt that the opponents were arrogant. But if we were the winning side, we could be the same too. However it doesn't seemed likely in the near future unless we fixed our leaky defence, non-existent midfield and less than confident attack.
We recovered from our defeat very well. We were laughing and joking very soon after that. We had planned to take photos of the winning team but ended up with the losing team's one. Never mind. Captain Kendrick had already asked us to make ourselves available for more field practices before the next game. We will come back stronger from the defeat. In the mean time we can only dream of our first victory.
posted by shyh jie at 12:35 PM
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