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Against a team we have not beaten before and at their 'home' ground and 'home' ref no less, we played the formation to suit the players we have at our disposal. A tight defense, fluid midfield and nimble attack was what we conjured and strived to maintain.
Wah gave us the lead in the first half with a smartly taken shot at the end of a flowing 5-man move. KK equalized early after the restart when powerful 11 cut across the defense to smash an unstoppable shot past our keeper. Chye restored our lead after YC astutely put him through. The goal of the match (and possibly the season so far) was Woon's rising diving header from Wah's precise cross.
A satisfying 3-1 win.
Kop is a good opponent with a balanced mix of veterans and youngsters to boost the lung power :) And we did find them quite a hard nut to crack until the last 15 minutes of 1st half. Kama's perseverance set up 2 goals for Teck Wah, one of which was a spectacular overhead kick. Then Kama's intelligent through pass set up Kian Hwa (you didn't read wrongly, yes, Kian Hwa), who made his appearance after a long-term knee injury, who went on to register a memorable goal on his comeback. The goal of the match must be from Teck Chye's left foot. No, he didn't score but what a cool mind he demonstrated. When he could have taken a shot at goal, he set up Gan with a delightful, perfectly weighted cross from his left foot that Gan had the simplest of task to head it in. Teck Wah rounded up the misery of Kop with a blistering shot.
It was good to see players who had not appeared for a while, namely Weng Kwan, Mark and ahem........ :) I believe I overheard Kop players on the sideline complimented on our team work. Well done, Marine Sunday!
Was it only in May that we pitted against this team, Malays in Red, at Woodlands Sec and came off winning 5-4? The re-match, if indeed so, saw a reversal in fortune with them a worthy 3-2 winner. But we simply did not turn up to play football, our off day. Melvin got into the rare act of scoring goal but it was an own goal, their winning goal. Our usually dependable Simon could have salvaged the match but he skied the penalty in the dying moments of the match. Malays in Red were technically superior and better players, but cannot accord a few of their players the same compliment on their behaviour...far from it. For the record, Gan and Simon found the net for us.
Having the kick-off time at 3pm and with the recent blazing sun and scorching heat, we feared the weather more than the opponent, a bunch of young men from the high-flying investment bank. We are a blessed bunch of mid-lifers. Weather turned out to be more than kind to us, with the unexpected gloomy clouds hanging but it didn't rain. We couldn't really complain of the cool effect, could we? Goldman Sachs turned out to be a bunch of relatively young football enthusiasts getting together for the first time. Lack of team work and short on fitness in most players aside, they were without a proper goalkeeper. Any decent goalkeeper would have prevented at least 6 of the 8 goals GS conceded. So the one-sided 8-1 scoreline was not indicative of their shortcoming in the quality aspect.
For the record, the harvesters were Teck Wah with a hattrick and 1 each from Mike (this slow tortoise still managed to beat GS' static goalkeeper for our opening goal, it just showed where their fatal point was), Simon (a beautiful cut-in followed by a thunderous shot that left any keeper no chance), Teck Chye (a direct free-kick that slipped through keeper's buttery fingers), Weng Khong (deployed as a forward for just 5 minutes and he demonstrated his positional awareness with a good follow-up after their keeper spilled Chwee Leng's well-taken shot onto the red carpet for him to tap in), Leo (another 5-minutes striker who benefited from this temporary deployment and he popped up at the far post to notch in a good cross from Teck Wah). And of course, Teck Wah's hattrick - 2 well-taken one-on-one goal and a well-drilled free-kick completed the rout of GS. The only MS player who wasn't happy with this harvest was Gan, who had to stand-in as our keeper and as a result, couldn't join the durian party upfront.
But it wasn't totally plain-sailing for us. After taking an early 2-0 lead, we slipped into the "durian mentality" mode that attracted a dressing-down at the break. We pulled up the socks in the 2nd half, and coupled with Goldman fading into Oldmen....another fruitful harvest resulted.
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