Match #13 (18 Mar 2012): Football Focused - Ignored Rough Play and Emerged Worthy 4-1 Winner

It was blessing in disguise that our Fighting Cock Trio were absent from this match against Kampung Hijau, otherwise their 2nd half's incessant antics would have certainly triggered a free-for-all. A relatively incident-free 1st half degenerated into crunching tackles and flying elbows from the kawan of the Hijau gang in the 2nd half, resulting in a few brusied lips on Teck Wah, Weng Kwan, Weng Khong and knocks on Rock and Gan. But we overcame their unnecessary rough play and walked away with a convincing 4-1 win over them.

How we ended up just 1-1 at the break bore uncanny resemblance with Liverpool's home form this season. We created a handful of scoring chances before being dealt with a sucker punch when Kampung Hijau's first and only goal attempt in the 1st half allow them to take the lead against the run of play. We continued to capitalise on their fumbling goalkeeper whose handling of the ball was highly suspicious and indeed, he made a mess out of Teck Wah's attempt and Gan pounded on the rebound for our equaliser. His fumbling antics aside, their keeper astonishingly produced two superb reflex saves to deny Gan's header and a certain own goal from his defender's head.

Despite the rough measures dished out by the Hijau gang in the 2nd half, we kept our cool to move the ball around albeit a tad harder with the water-logged pitch. While Simon's numerous long-range attempts were either too weak or sailed over, Teck Wah produced the perfect strike from a free-kick just outside the box to put us 2-1 up. Gan was then fouled in the box and Simon made no mistake from the spot despite a defender's attempt to play mind games on our Mr Reliable. Then, the goal of the match put the icing on the cake. Chor Guan, deployed upfront in the last 25 min of the match, turned his marker and left him dead, went down to the byeline before squaring the ball for the onrushing Teck Wah to get ahead of the keeper and nip the ball in. Simple flowing football! Worthy 4-1 winners, we were.

Match #12 (11 Mar 2012): Dug Deep for satisfying 2-1 win

Estar Loco looked the type of team that fancies form over substance. Togged in the blue and black of Inter Milan, they were darn serious on what adorns them relatively young turks, with the captain (and then subsequent changes) taking time to put the armband on. Wah siah (accord the meaning according to whether u prefer the second or third intonation of the hanyu pinyin)!

We humble MS didn't have our usual captain to flaunt the kind of substance that matters, so we were left with our greying hair as indication that we could be of some small threat. Off the go, EL were playing it tight and pressing hard, albeit without any real threat in attack. We were compact in defence and more incisive in attack, and created a few chances that should have put us in a comfortable lead, but the first half ended with the match finely balanced.

The pattern of the match continued very much in the same vein and to our surprise, we went behind through a well-taken shot from their nifty forward. We turned the match around late on with 2 strikes from Wah, assisted by a long throw from Khong, and a free-kick delivery from Simon. Great spirit shown in a thoroughly deserving win!

Match #11 (26 Feb 2012): Convincing 3-1 Win Over KS' Blues

Of all the encounters with Kok Seng's Blues, this  must be the most convincing win. We could have scored another handful more, considering the glaring misses by Teck Chye and Weng Khong and 2 superb saves by their keeper to deny the Tang brothers.

Not suprisingly, both Tang siblings added to their tally and Woon's maiden goal of the season capped a fine performance, though the scoreline did not really reflect our domination, especially in the first half.

The win was marred by a serious injury to KH, whose unquestionable, but really stupid, committment to block a certain shot came up worse. As Teck Wah captured it on video, the tackle did KH's knee in.

Match #10 (26 Feb 2012): Brave Performance, Gritty Win

Our unbeaten streak of the new season looked set to come to a halt against Red Stars, which comprise a potent mix of late-30s and early-20s and have, among them, a few players who used to ply their trade in S-League. Their technique, movement, passing are simply 2 notches above us. Facing such formidable opponent and given the water-soaked pitch that made the condition even more treacherous for us, we put in the best shift of duty to date, grinding out an against-all-odds 3-2 win over them. The fact they applauded and paid generous compliments to us at the end of the match speaks volume of our grit and determination. Everyone of us worked our socks off for this hugely satisfying win.

The blistering pace that they set from the whistle stretched us thin and the match was hardly 10 minutes old when they opened accounts. Teck Chye equalised, though he looked a tad offside, when a fiercely determined Simon bulldozed his way in between 2 defenders for Teck Chye to benefit from. Simon then scored another of his trademark long-range goal from a free-kick just after the centre line to reverse the deficit at the break. Simon added to his goal tally with another cracker from outside box but Red Stars forced the match to the wire with a late goal to set up a pulsating finish. Our defence department comprising Melvin, Rock, Weng Kwan, Ng, Chwee Leng and Chung Wen could stand tall and proud against such pacy and skilful forwards of Red Stars. Well Done! Love it!

Match #9 (18 Feb 2012): A Disciplined Marine Sunday; A Fine Win

We put up a very disciplined performance to beat Team Orange 7-0 and kept our second clean sheet so far. No doubt, our strikers should grab the limelight but credit to our defence line, impressively marshalled by Melvin and fine performance from Rock and Chung Wen, both back after a spell on the sidelines through injury. Our guest player, Daniel, put in a fine shift of duty as left-back. Teck Chye (3), Teck Wah (2) and one each from Kama and Mike completed the rout.

Match #8 (12 Feb 2012): The Wind took out the Venom of Opponent

In any other matches, those two moments of individual brilliance from Teck Chye would have usually grabbed the limelight of this 5-3 win over Venom. But this win was actually masterminded by our resident feng-shui master, i.e. Melvin, who advised just before we kicked off the 2H that we should make use of the wind which was blowing against Venom. True enough, we scored two wind-assisted goals - Simon, from his trademark long range free-kick just after the centre line that swerved cruelly for Venom's custodian to deal with. Then the master himself swinged in a corner that seemed to hang eternally in mid air before it suddenly dropped just under the bar, again embarassing their keeper. Our master's advice clearly overshadowed every other thing.

Teck Chye, scorer of our 2nd and 4th goals, atoned for his countless misses in the last match with this pair of screaming beauties, one from each foot. The younger Tang opened the account for us after Chor Guan nodded the free-kick from Melvin perfectly onto the path of Teck Wah for the latter to deftly place the ball beyond the reach of Venom's keeper.

Venom, to their credit, kept pressing us and reducing the deficit to eventually equalise at 3-3. They thought they had the match in their hands but too bad, they don't believe in feng shui. And we have a practitioner in disguise, and a non-Chinese one. Full moon next, how should we play?

Match #7 (4 Feb 2012): 8-nil Romp

The one-sided scoreline was not reflective of ACME's quality. We know them, our past few encounters were close and evenly contested. For this match, they were not only deprived of their regular players but were also short in number, starting and ending the match with 10 players. We were in similar situation and had to call up 2 guest players.

We were disciplined throughout the match. Even with a 4-0 lead at half-time, we continued to press them hard and continued to breach their high defence line with our overlapping runs to find space.

Teck Wah (3 goals), Teck Chye (2, and he missed 4 other glorious opportunities in the 1st half!), Mike (2) and Kama completed the rout of ACME. And KH had 4.....assists :)