TPJC

Spirits were pretty high after our last gasp victory over SRJC, and having notched a victory under our belt, we felt confident of getting another 3 points entering the TPJC game. Scouting reports stated that TPJC had a key player in their left winger, and some of the members of the 2006 team thought that he might be Ammad(?), who had played for TPJC the previous year. Moreover, Zenzel had picked up a nasty ankle injury and the second choice right-back, Weiyu, had to come in to play against their 'dangerous' left winger. However, with the inclusion of Weiyu, both fullbacks had the ability to throw the ball into the 6 yard box, and our arsenal increased. During the pre-season, we scored 2 goals directly from throw-ins, and we hoped to increase that tally against TPJC.

We played TPJC on the Tuesday fixture, and we trained out of school the day before, as the Softballers had booked the RJC pitch. Initially, the season was supposed to be played on Mondays and Thursdays just like last year, but aside from being delayed twice, our season fixtures were changed to Tuesday and Fridays, which took us by surprise. Previously, we would play a match on Monday, train on Tuesday (our usual training time), have light training on Wednesday, have a match on Thursday, rest on Friday, and come back on saturday to train for the next match. However, with the shift of fixture dates, we now had to train on Mondays out of school, and our coach even toyed with the idea of training on Sunday. The only things I can recall about this training was our coach's emphasis on how the TPJC keeper had a tendency to offer us 'gifts' with his goal kicks, and Quan's 15 minutes of fame as strikerfor the shadow side, in which his attempted backheel throughball for Guan Koon failed.

Starting lineup was: Timon, Jeremy, Quan, Cunzhi, Weiyu, Yijing, Hashir, Eugene, Guan Koon, Sean and Bong, with us playing our two fastest strikers, or dashers as our coach put it, up front in the hope that their pace would unlock TPJC's defense.

We went ahead quite early in the match, with Sean winning a penalty after some neat interplay on the left wing. Cunzhi stepped up and duly converted, but that was to be the only goal of the half. We had our fair share of chances, but due to poor finishing, we kept TPJC in the game. During half-time, our coach warned us that if we didn't put the game away soon, we would be inviting an upset as a one goal lead was but a slender margin.

I didn't play in the game at all, and I can't really remember the subsitutes, but safe to say Chaolun came on and Sean scored his 1st goal of the tournament by sneaking in the far post after some good work by Bong/Chaolun led to a loose ball in the 6 yard box. The goal was very scrappy actually, and the ball actually got stuck between Sean's feet the goalkeeper and defenders charged him down, and for a moment, as Eugene put it, "his balls dropped" as we thought that Sean might miss the golden opportunity to put the game away. However, he un-stuck his feet and tapped the ball in, sparing us some blushes. The third goal was typical of A Division soccer: Cunzhi took a free kick from slightly in front of the half way line and sent a high and fast ball in. The keeper spilt the ball and Eugene had the simple task of knocking in the rebound.

During the game, we strung together a flowing move that totalled 12 continuous passes, starting with one touch possession on our left flank, a one touch switch to our right flanks, a lay off by Guan Koon to Eugene and a piercing through ball by Eugene to Bowen who had made a beautiful backdoor run. Sadly, even though we described Eugene's pass as Bowen-esque, Bowen missed narrowly, prompting Eugene to jest that Bowen's finishing fell short of being Eugene-esque.

Aside from that one move, we didn't exactly play good football, and we could have increased our goal tally if not for some poor finishing, but in my opinion, no offense to TPJC, we were never in serious danger of not winning the match. Credit to TPJC, they did fight us all the way to the end, but considering our intel had been mistaken and their left-winger was NOT Ammad, they did not pose much an attacking threat up front. Our coach wasn't too pleased with our performance, not that we played poorly, but that we were never forced into top gear and we largely settled for the 3-0 scoreline.