The match
started off with the usual line-up : the model & the one with
the deadly finishing Ah Cai
and Daniel Ding respectively.
The winger spots were taken by Minheng
and Raymond,"the silent one".
In central midfield was Jiamin
and Chek" headless chicken".
The captain as usual plays wherever he wants or feels like without
any regard for tactical positioning. In defence were the deadly
combination of Lester, Kiat
and "Alan Shearer" Zixin.
Dasch kicked
off the match and did not take too long to dominate the opponents,
but like so many amateur sides are often caught on the counter-attack
due to over-enthusiastic defenders joining in the attack but not
returning to the defence. Dasch scored first with a move started
by Raymond on the left side
of midfield. A typical weak pass by Raymond
saw Daniel sprint off the
blocks and get to the lousily passed ball first. Daniel
then controlled the ball expertly before getting past a desperate
lunge from a defender, only to find the ball was too close to
the opponents' goalie. With a sudden surge in pace, he stretched
to kick the ball out of the way of the goalie, leaving him to
grasp at air. Unfortunately for Daniel,
the ball rolled to Minheng
(his teammate of 13 years) who greedily put the ball into the
net with an untypical left footed shot. This got the opponents
all fired up as they came at us for an equaliser. Up to this point,
the only things worth noting about Ah
Cai were his woeful finishing, poor passing, late-coming,
scolding his teammates with expletives and on one occasion even
preventing his own team from scoring a goal with a spectacular
headed clearance.
As the opponents
came at us Zixin decided to
get into the fray of things. He, of the totally useless right
leg, could only watch in horror when a short backpass was intercepted
and put across goal into the net. To be fair to him, Raymond
had not provided him with an option to pass, while Ruibin
should have pushed away the shot with minimal effort. If only
Zixin had the vision to see
that Daniel had run into space
and provided him with an option that Raymond
failed to. In any case the score was now 1-1. But Zixin
was already shattered by his own stupidity. To make matters worse,
Ah Cai was missing chance after chance that would have
calmed the team down. As things were, Zixin
lost the ball again and allowed the opponents to go 2-1 up. Zixin
was so devastated that all he could do was lie down on the pitch
and look up at the skies above, as if to ask "why me?"
During half-time,
Alvan decided to drop by on his way to the market for
some Sunday shopping. Kenneth,
who had also missed a goal which was harder to miss than to score,
decided to allow Alvan to
play against logic.( I say this because we usually put him in
only when we know there is absolutely no chance of us losing.)
Some words of encouragement were given to Zixin,the
dumbass.
The second
half started and was barely 5 minutes old when on another effective
run towards goal, Jiamin was
tripped in the box, leading to a penalty. Daniel
read the script and walked up confidently to take the penalty,which
he duly converted by sending the goalie the wrong way. This was
a real encouragement for the team and got the morale in the team
to an all time high. The match then took on a pattern of us attacking
and them counter-attacking. On one of those attacks, either Ah
Cai or Minheng
squared the ball for Daniel
to run in and do a simple tap-in (something which Cai
& Kenneth & Chek
need to learn to do). The score was now 4-2 in our favour and
we were not going to allow them to catch up again. The man-of-the-match
goes to Daniel,of course,
for his 2 influential goals and second place for the award is
a tie between Jiamin for his
tireless running for the team, and surprise surprise! Chek
for effectively breaking up so many of their attacks.
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