A WIN AND A LOADFUL OF MISSES by Daniel Ding

4-2

vs ISLANDWIDE FC (11 a-side)

  • Date: 03 Sep 2000 Sunday
    Time: 1000 hrs
  • Place: Westlake Sec
  • Duration: 40 mins per half
  • Crowd: Another 2 other teams waiting to have their game.
  • Weather: Very hot and sunny
  • Sub: Alvan
SCORERS
  • Mingheng (1st half)
  • Half time score: 1-1
  • Daniel (pen, 2nd half)
  • Daniel (2nd half)
  • Mingheng (2nd half)
  • 90" Full time score: 4-2

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.

Copyright Dasch Rovers 1999. Email daschrovers for any comments or queries.

 

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