After all the anticipation, high hopes and excitement, our new season began, not with a bang, but with a whimper. Long after the exams ended in late Nov, our first match was only played on 12 Dec and the second on 19 Dec. Only these 2 games were played and to make things worse, the first was an organisational cork-up, lasting just half an hour. All our previous scheduled matches were called off due to..

1) opponents too strong (who wants to be trashed 8-0 again?)

2) opponents too professional (who wants to pay $80 for a pitch and referee... though if you throw in a couple of dancing girls as well, I'll take it.)

3) opponents pulled out of the game as they don't have enough players (who wants to play 5-a-side?)

4) inaction on the part of the management (who wants to do the dirty work of organising matches?)

5) inability to find teams to play against us (who wants to play us?)

But still, we did managed to play some soccer. And chalked up decent performances. Against Socceradoes - a team of 20 year old NSFs - Dasch for once dominated a game, winning 2-0. We more or less controlled the entire game, and our stand-in keeper Zhiyong barely had anything to do throughout, which is a rare occurrence for Dasch (normally we allowed the opponents to freely take pot-shots at our goal). All round good work by our guys resulted in an opportunistic goal by captain Kenneth and a brilliant cheeky nutmeged strike by Jiamin. We could have notched up a higher score if only the field was not so congested. Speaking of which, this particular match was blighted by the lack of playing time, as what seemed like a dozen teams jostled for time and space on the overused Westlake pitch that afternoon. In fact, even our beloved long-time-no-see striker, Yiying, turned up this time and he had just stepped in as a substitute when.... the match ended, at only the lousy half hour mark (cos we gentlemanly types graciously made way for the other teams waiting to use the field) However, due to the good attendance we managed to play a intra-team training match after that; so it wasn't a futile trip down for the reserves, and it was great to see the guys taking this training game seriously.. such as Bryan and Suijin's awesome, all-out sliding tackles on each other (even when the ball was at least 10m from either of them).. Yiying putting in a typically _______ (fill in your own word here) display.. and also, everyone got to practice attacking (missing open goals) and defending (missing easy clearances). By the way, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it is not Westlake Secondary but Westlake Primary? Some stupid idiot had all along been telling me things like "meet at Westlake Sec", "play at Westlake Sec" etc.

The second match was a week later against Silver Mercury (mmm.. I'm guessing they named their team after the liquid metal rather than the planet.. "Brilliant deduction, Sherlock"), a group of under-16 kids..er.. players. A very decent side, considering their youth and more than a match for us. On a very heavy muddy field, we had an epic, see-saw battle as both sides took leads, equalise and switch leads before we eventually came out on top 6-4. A record 5 goals by the on-fire Cheng Cai sealed our win, helped by some outstanding work from Raymond, Zixin and Bryan. Overall, it was a credible show from every one of our players present, in light of the fact that we had only one recognised forward (Cheng Cai) turning up that morning. Actually, attendance was rather poor as we had only 12 players coming down, though one benefit was everyone got to play either the entire 90 minutes or at least a substantial part of it.

Note: For more detailed match reports (as written by Kenneth), pls see the match reports page.

So Dasch Rovers are now on a glorious 5-match unbeaten run. (Wow! Kick us.) We are in shock. This is surreal. I believe our manager-player Eng Kiat would have won the Manager of the Moment award if we are in some league. However, more pressing questions are: Is this the end of our endearing, under-dog loser image? Are we no longer Singapore's version of Southampton? Have we lost our vulnerable cuteness? Will the girls now desert us? Will we become as invincible and unpopular as Man U? Of course, one question which is easily answered is... what girls?? No female fans from our famous fan club turned up.. though I'm sure our No. 1 fan, er, you-know-who was giving us invisible moral support all the time. (I'm not naming this adorable girl in case she gets all misty-eyed and mushy, and say things like, "Ooooo... I'm sooooo touched you mentioned / remembered me, Co-ed... I missed you soooo very much... you're all soooo cute" ... and other typical girl stuff.)

These last two weekends of December coincided with the Christmas and New Year holidays, so no soccer for us. We have... ahh.. better and more fun things to do during these periods. Hopefully we can squeeze in a few more matches in Jan, before school really picks up pace and before Chinese New Year (when everything shuts down again) and keep winning. Here, guys, we'll bid a fond farewell to the 1990s - the decade of our formative, foolish teenage years - and welcome the year 2000 (and the coming decade of our mature but still foolish adulthood).

Happy New Year!

As always, Co-ed

Shout at Alvan at our forum page.