After last week’s game was rained off, we were back in action at St Gabriels Sec. Sherman’s injury and Ben’s absence made us look externally for someone to go in goal, and Ambu (SK Friend) gamely came in and helped. 17 players but no recognized strikers. Still a big squad to rotate.
The starting line-up was as follows.
Ambu
Jiunn Kee Roger Bee
Poh Ron Andy Richard Yiong
Harold (Captain)
Subs:
Nick
Daryl
Jerome
SK
Henry
Damien
The message was to try to keep the ball and pass to feet. Most importantly keep the shape. We started very strongly against Team Martin. Dominating the game right from the start, we created plenty of chances. Ron struck the woodwork from a free-kick (twice I think). Then Harold couldn’t finish when put through. The movement was crisp and we were doing well in keeping the opponents back. Ambu didn’t had much to do. Things got a little niggly and we could sense that temperatures were rising. Subs were made to keep everyone playing. We couldn’t finish our chances and half-time was 0-0.
Realizing the domination that we had as well as the big squad, instructions were made to press the opponents more. Pressing means everyone do their part and stick close to their man. This had to be done in a organized manner and everyone has to work together to do this. We also switched to 4-4-2 and tried to press higher up the pitch. Jerome won a free kick on the right side and up step Poh to fire it into goal. 1-0. We continued pressing and definitely looked the more dangerous side. However, the constant changing/rotating of the subs meant that we had difficulty in getting into rhythm but this is unavoidable. I believed we were making subs like every 5 to 10 minutes. In the final 5 minutes, goal mouth scramble resulted in Henry accidentally kicking the goalkeeper. This created a mass reaction from their already volatile midfielder who rushed to grab Henry. Shouting and pushing occurred but we were all trying to control and stop it instead of letting it escalating into something major. The referee blew for full time after that.
The referee was a disaster. Having seen an opponent raised his hands against us, he calmly stated that this was between the two of them and he is not going to interfere. He let several bad fouls go unpunished and didn’t even bother to try to control the game. In short, he was CRAP!
This game was played on a small pitch. The opponents were not that strong. We were definitely the better team but we couldn’t make the chances count. Was it because there were no strikers? Or was it because of bad luck? We have enough quality in the team to put the ball in the net but we couldn’t today. On another we would have been punished. Have to make the chances count. Ron had a good game in mopping around in front of the defence and was unlucky with his shooting. Harold tried hard but couldn't make it count. Yiong continued his return from injury with hard running. Defence was reliable when called upon. But the man of the match this week goes to POH, not just for scoring the winning goal but actually being able to reach a long ball from Ron down the byline and getting a good cross which Harold failed to connect properly. Enough said about not sending long ball to Poh to chase.
See you Saturday.
