Match #34 (25 July 09): For July Month, Any Win Is Welcomed, No Matter How Undeservedly!

July was not too great a month with indifferent performances and mixed results. It was also an unusual month where every one of the five matches, we had to call up guest players to make up the number. Again, for this match, we had to search far and wide and finally managed to call up three guest players in Terk, Wilfred and Woon to provide us the limbs. Wilfred is probably known to a handful of us. Woon? He’s a distant contact from KH’s Shanghai party days! That was how far and wide of our search! Even with the eventual 13 players, we melted in the 2nd half under the super hot sun. Miraculously, we managed to cling on to the half-time 3-1 lead all the way to the final whistle, though we knew that we hardly deserved to win. Great credit to some fine saves from Brandon and resolute defending by our defenders to save us the day.

With his recent sparkling performance and MoTM awards, Teck Chye’s display in the opening 5 minutes was simply complacency in abundance. His first pass was an overhit pass to Kian Hwa but be blamed the latter for not running to the ball. His second pass was a wayward pass across the pitch that had everything except any decent strength or direction, and presented the ball to Orange’s striker in front of him. Chor Guan, caught off-guarded by Teck Chye’s moment of folly, did not recover in time to prevent Orange’s forward to slot the ball past Brandon for the opening goal of the match. As if they conspired to test KH’s limit, it was then Chor Guan’s turn to present Orange’s striker with another golden opportunity. This time, he failed to trap a back pass and allowed Orange’s forward to have another go at Brandon but our keeper did well to divert the shot away for a corner. We then won a dubious free kick outside Orange’s penalty box as Teck Wah was adjudged to have been kicked from behind when it looked like a fair challenge on the ball. Teck Wah’s effort from the free-kick was superbly denied by Orange’s stand-in goalkeeper, who despite his age, produced a full-stretch dive to palm the ball out. But the goalkeeper could do nothing to the resultant corner, as he was caught wrong-footed by the swerve of the ball from Kian Hwa’s left-foot corner. The ball, aided by the narrow pitch, curved directly into the top left-hand of the goal. One apiece! It proved to be a fluke goal as KH’s subsequent two corners from the same spot failed to find any players or the frame of the goal.

Brandon’s uncertainty in ball-handling returned to haunt him as he allowed a long shot to bounce in front of him. The spillage almost proved costly but he recovered in time to gather the loose ball. But that opened up the avenue for Orange to launch long balls into the box from then onwards, hoping to capitalise on this gold mine. Also aided by the fact they failed to break through our defence on the ground, they resorted to shoot from distance but none found the target. Woon, playing on the wide right, played his part in our 2nd goal. He cut in well from the right and hit a left-foot shot at goal. The shot was not packed with much strength but it went beyond the reach of the diving keeper to come off the left upright. Weng Khong was at the right place to tap in the rebound. 2 – 1! A diving heading clearance from Kian Hwa launched our 3rd goal. Terk chased down the clearance to the box. Orange had the ball covered but his one-trick-too-many allowed Terk to win back the ball and plant it at the lower right hand corner of the goal to extend our lead to 3 – 1, which was how it stood at the break.

The extreme heat was a huge toil on our bodies and limbs throughout the 2nd half. Orange could have reduced the deficit early in the 2nd half but Chor Guan was quick and nimble to clear the danger. Brandon was second to another long ball into the box and that allowed Orange’s striker to square the ball across the 6-yards box for another Orange player to shoot at our empty net but Chor Guan covered the open goal to clear the goal attempt.
The narrow pitch was a boon to Orange as well as they almost scored directly from corner twice. The first one was tipped away by Brandon and Leo, covering at the right post, headed away the 2nd direct attempt. We had our moment to extend our lead when Terk found space in the box to receive a pass from Gan but his shot was too direct at the keeper. With the clock ticking away, Orange found their last attempt to search for a goal denied by Brandon’s low dive to his right to palm another certain goal away. Woon was then struck down with severe cramp but there was not much time added to the agony. Referee whistled for the end of the match and Marine Sunday had toiled hard for a lucky win!

Man of The Match: Brandon (3 out of 10 votes)
For all his uncertainty in ball handling, the fact was that Brandon did save us the day with a few important saves, especially the last minute low dive to his right to turn a goal-bound ball away for corner:
“MOTM = Brandon. Not affected by previous few games poor performance, he is slowly getting back to his best. Did well in for the whole game and made few crucial saves.”
“MOTM is Brandon - made a couple a very good saves.”
“MOTM - Brandon - Still not fully recovered, and having taken some stick recently, Brandon bounced back strongly to keep us in the game and a comfortable win with his numerous saves. Well done!!!”

Chor Guan and Kian Hwa tied at 2 votes each. Chor Guan slogged hard to keep the opponents at bay, so the 2nd spot went to him!
“MOM is Chor Guan , He had a much improved game compared to the riverlife game and managed to cover the defence well including a goal line clearance. His workrate moving up and covering the defence was commendable despite his obvious fatigue hangover from thursday's game.”
“MoTM to Chor Guan for the early goal-line clearance, otherwise the certain goal would have rejuvenated the opponent. A lot of long balls were aimed directly at breaching our backline but Chor Guan cleared them well!”

“MOTM- Kh for equalizing from the corner. Put brakes on opponent's confidence and allowed MS to stamp our authority and win the game.”
“Motm goes to kh. Most lively player on a day when everyone struggled. Important tackles and good play up front. Lousy corners though. Ha!”

Our guest player, Woon, played a simple but assured game. He and the other 2 defensive players, Melvin and Leo, had 1 vote each:
“MOTM: My vote is for guest player Woon. While unfamiliar with his usual standard of play, I saw that he settled down very fast into the MS passing game keeping his passes tight, connecting on most of them and I cannot remember him losing any balls. Kian Hwa seems rejuvenated after his 2 week break and continued his non-stop running even in the mind sapping 2nd half heat. Kudos!”
“motm: The Referee! Spider was the talking point throughout the match...as usual! Jokes aside, difficult to choose...not because too many good players but everyone played average. good thing we were playing a 'not so good team' hehe. Melvin wins the vote for keeping the defense line decent (though he was pulling Chye aside to scratch his balls) though Chye and Guan tried their best to clown around in the early stages. The only thing missing was Melvin dribbling from last man to score.”
“Motm : Leo. makes amends for his so-so display on Thursday games and perform well in defence as well as making accurate long pass to the strikers, but the strikers could not make his passes count.”