Final Score - Incepcion 4 - 3 Everest Eagles
Pitch: Ping Yi Secondary School
Incepcion Scorers:
(1) Patrick (2) Colin - Penalty (3) Darryl (4) LawrenceMOM: Sherman
First Half: Incepcion 1 - 2 Everest Eagles
This week saw us playing against a veteran Indian team with perhaps one or two younger players. Overall a rather fit veteran and ball playing team as well.
Incepcion started the game brightly as it was a long weekend and surprisingly non of their members were drunk the night before. Perhaps out of respect for the Muslim holiday...and it was not long before we took the lead after some enterprising play.A bouncing ball into midfield and Lawrence headed a lobbed ball into the box and Pat beat the offside trap to lob the keeper and we were up 1-0.
Patrick went from hero to zero in a couple of minutes as he cushioned a no danger floater into the box for Sherman and their striker intercepted to slot the ball into an empty net. 1-1.
Getting back to square 1 was not Pat's idea and he worked tirelessly and got into the box again with a chance to beat the keeper...however, he expected it to be offside and did the cardinal sin of not playing to the whistle and nonchantly poked the ball wide. Zero to Villain now....
Everest Eagles were starting to get the hang of the game and their nippy striker soon tore down our wing and cut in to score. Everest Eagles lead 1-2.
Second Half: Incepcion 4 - Everest Eagles 3
We started to rely on hard graft and closing down space and generally working our socks off to get back into the game. Our equalizing goal came courtesy of a penalty taken by Colin when our pressing in their box forced an accidental high handball in the area. 2-2.
Everest Eagles were forced to take long pot shots now and Sherman was always comfortably behind those...one of the midfield scrums saw us awarded a free kick and when darryl floated the ball towards the penalty box, their keeper totally misjudged it and could only get a hand to it and palm it into their own goal. 3-2
Almost instantly another scrum saw the ball break to Loy and he stabbed it into the net from just inside the box. 4-2 now and we were leading comfortably. However, from the kickoff and a couple of passes, their old lanky midfielder strolled thru the whole team to slot the ball away. 4-3 and we must have been dreaming.....
That goal woke us up and we defended resolutely to hang on in the last 5 mins with Sherman making two great saves to keep us up. One a palm stinger from the right and another a diving salmon-esque save to tip the ball wide and we ended the game as winners.
Overall, not a pretty usual performance from us this week as the game was won on a lot of graft and sweat. Man of Match performance this week goes to Sherman for two great saves at the end especially the low diving tip right at the end for us to maintain our win.See you all this Saturday.Harold
