I wouldn't dare to use the label "great team" on ourselves. But after last Saturday's gritty performance, I think we could indulge ourselves with this label for a fleeting moment. When all the regulars turn up and play in their usual positions, it's a good team but it's a business-as-usual team. The character of the team is tested when it is short of a few regular players, especially for key positions, and others have to give up their usual and preferred positions to fill these vacant positions. And the team go on to achieve result. Then this team is better than good, perhaps still far from great but certainly not mediocre. And we were precisely better than just business-as-usual last Saturday against UBS. Yes, we had the insider information (in me) to capitalise on their weakest link - their inexperienced goalkeeper - and richly benefited from it, but isn't football about tactics as well?
Among the positions, I always feel that the most difficult, and thankless, positions to play are the central defensive pair. We were short of our regular central defenders but Gan and Simon stepped up admirably to fill in these roles and galvanised a much-deserved 5-3 win over UBS. No doubt they had a nervous 1st half display but 2nd half performance was solid, ably supported by our rock-steady fullbacks in Ng, Leo and Chwee Leng.
UBS' blistering pace in the opening 15 minutes of the match really unsettled us - they closed down on us fast, passed the ball quickly, had pacy forwards. Not surprisingly, they opened the account on the 7th minute when our defence was carved wide open by their fabulous forward, aptly named Fab, to cut-back and wrong-footed Simon and Gan before planting a stiff grounder past the rooted Brandon. For all the upperhand they had on us, UBS failed to leverage on that and their momentum was somewhat affected by a series of substitutions so early in the match. We regained our footing and began to find inroads. Mike has the tendency to frustrate us as he failed to make any good use of the 2 through balls presented to him. But he also has the knack of producing the unexpected pleasant surprise to knock in goal for us when we think otherwise. A sweeping counter-attack had Teck Wah break free on the right and his low cross into the box, bouncing twice enroute, was miraculously converted by Mike, even with a defender breathing down his back! 1-1.
Sensing the vulnerability in their inexperienced keeper, we began to single him by placing crosses and dead balls close to him, and our subsequent 4 goals resulted in one way or another from his poor handling of high balls. He failed to deal with an in-swinging corner from the left and the ball sailed directly into goal, with Kian Hwa claiming credit to that. But UBS restored parity when a defensive blunder by Gan, an intended back-header meant for Brandon, gifted possession to their pacy winger who then relayed the ball to his forward to shoot past the out-of-position Brandon. 2-2 at the break.
With a stroke of luck, we had our 3rd goal. Teck Wah arched backward to his maximum to reach out to a cross. His resultant header lacked any power but somehow UBS' custodian failed to deal with the looping ball, and it dropped just below the bar. 3-2. UBS gallantly searched for their equalising goal and it came from a contentious call from the referee to judge that Leo handled the ball in the box. UBS' skilful import from India coolly converted the spot kick to put UBS back at 3-3.
We then won 2 free-kicks from almost identical positions just after the mid-line and we had Simon to launch his trademark long balls directly at the keeper. The keeper nervously tipped the 1st one over for a corner, which UBS failed to clear convincingly from the resultant corner and Weng Khong pounced on the confusion among the UBS defenders caused by the conflicting calls for handball (from us) and offside (from them) and walked the ball into the unguarded net. 4-3. Simon's 2nd free-kick again put their keeper under great stress. With added pressure from Teck Chye, the keeper failed to deal with the free-kick, it came off the upright and Teck Wah knocked in the rebound from a tight angle. 5-3!
Teck Chye wasted 2 golden opportunities to add to the scoresheet and then Teck Wah couldn't set up a perfect tap-in for Yong Chua in a glorious breakaway that had 3 MS players zooming in against UBS' solitary defender. UBS came close to scoring on several occasions too but Brandon strong right-foot blocked 3 certain goals and on other occasions, our defensive quartets held the line well and admirably snuffed out their attacks.
A gritty 5-3 win. A great one, perhaps.
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