Underdogs Champions again - Rotaract
for the last tournament in NUS, or rather a swansong, a last goodbye, adieu, i decided to sign up last minutely for this rotoract competition. It was kinda embarrassing, cos' i actually came across it while being a blog surfer.. gerard's msn nick had his blog, so having finished exams, i was free and went to see.. and then blog hop here n dere.. then i clicked on WL's site, which was my former union camp SP's fren and also DL's ex. Me, being ba gua, decided to see and i came across this post advertising the rotaract club's fund raising efforts for a trip to laos to help set up some IT facitilty or school or smth..
for my yep, i spent one whole day heaving old newspapers n clothes and had a separate session to make balloon n sell them.. for theirs they decided to hold a soccer tourny and charge each team a whopping 55 bucks! I emailed WL and lied that i heard from a fren's fren abt it, and she replied on the deadline day. As such, I only had 6 hrs to get a team up and boy was it a make shift team.
After meeting at 1115 hrs, we waited til 1245 hrs before our first match. In a table of 3 other teams, we were agst Band of brudders.. armaniX and some other team. we were hoping to start real soon becos the first team band of brudders din have enuff players so it was 5 v 6 at first but 2 mins into the game, their last member came and we had not made our man advantage count yet.
Our advantage was that we had been playing together for almost 8 yrs already since jc, some even less. and thru out our 4 yrs in NUS, we played every sat and joined a couple of tournys but during competition our tactic was counterattking and hope that matchwinner guoyew could conjure smth special everytime.. and it certainly worked. this time, we had 2 other members in 1.9 m "Crouchy" Eugene and the Rock reina SY as keeper.
1st game was an easy win 3:0 - one dunstan goal, one own goal and SY's late goal which was the most xiang yang goal. 2nd game we were made to work a little harder as BCFC was stronger but still we managed to triumph 1:0 due to guoyew's goal where he shot from a tight angle. the last non consequential game was agst the opponents who had already won their previous 2 games but we managed to beat them 1 0 too.
In the 2nd round, we faced a very resilient side but shd have beaten them in normal time. Dunstan was hitting the post and all our attacks were close. Our tactic was the liverpoolian tactic of pump long ball to eugene or hope one counterattack succeeds since we played a formation of 3 1 1 which asked a lot of the two frontmen. we then went to penalty kicks and it was a dreaded thing cos we lost on penalties 2 yrs ago to become 2nd - Nic's famous miss. this time, almost all the members had to take the penalty and thankfully i din miss mine. SY had already saved one penalty but the referee had not blown yet so it dragged til the 6th member and he saved after weijie converted.
in the quarterfinals, we thought we would be meeting the blue team of Maju United which were actually 15 to 16 yr olds from macpherson secondary training for C division title. Our tactic was since they were younger, faster and fitter the only way was to out muscle them but thankfully , the fixture had us pitted against a team which fought literally with the other team. these 2 indian teams had came to blows at the touchline after some rough play and there was a fair bit of taunting where a lot of mediators had to come. there was one aggressor who even taunted the player " YOU CANT CATCH ME" as he accelerated past the defender. it was just fate that we had to play agst them but we took the lead with guoyew scoring after dunstan passed to him. but 2 mins later, gy was adjudged to have pushed agst a attacker and they pulled lvl soon enuff thru the penalty which was saved but the rebound trickled in. however eugene finally used his height to score against them from a dunstan kick in and we passed this round.
in the semis i almost died as i huffed and puffed. we took the lead agst VJO thru dunstan but they equalised with abt 6 mins to go as they sprung a quick counterattk and beat SY at the near post.. however, the penalty shootout again managed to see us triumphant.
the last final was agst the maju united who were one of the best teams as they outplayed a lot of others en route. however, it was a stalemate as both teams nullified each other since we were used to this kind of passing play rather than teams relying on individual brillance. yet again, it had to go down to penalties and despite gy missing the first one, SY and dunstan scored as we were crowned as champions.
1st prize was $180 cash, 2nd was $120 while 3rd was $60. We then made a decision to donate the prize money back to the rotaract club, stunning the organizers.. after all, half our team was already working. and we bought the yep t shirts wif the money too.. only eugene was the asshole who din contribute to the poor laos chn fund. but actually this fund raising actually reduces the cost of what yep pple have to pay. but it was a gd feeling doing a gd deed and i cant believe our team THE UNDERDOGS won yet again.
for my yep, i spent one whole day heaving old newspapers n clothes and had a separate session to make balloon n sell them.. for theirs they decided to hold a soccer tourny and charge each team a whopping 55 bucks! I emailed WL and lied that i heard from a fren's fren abt it, and she replied on the deadline day. As such, I only had 6 hrs to get a team up and boy was it a make shift team.
After meeting at 1115 hrs, we waited til 1245 hrs before our first match. In a table of 3 other teams, we were agst Band of brudders.. armaniX and some other team. we were hoping to start real soon becos the first team band of brudders din have enuff players so it was 5 v 6 at first but 2 mins into the game, their last member came and we had not made our man advantage count yet.
Our advantage was that we had been playing together for almost 8 yrs already since jc, some even less. and thru out our 4 yrs in NUS, we played every sat and joined a couple of tournys but during competition our tactic was counterattking and hope that matchwinner guoyew could conjure smth special everytime.. and it certainly worked. this time, we had 2 other members in 1.9 m "Crouchy" Eugene and the Rock reina SY as keeper.
1st game was an easy win 3:0 - one dunstan goal, one own goal and SY's late goal which was the most xiang yang goal. 2nd game we were made to work a little harder as BCFC was stronger but still we managed to triumph 1:0 due to guoyew's goal where he shot from a tight angle. the last non consequential game was agst the opponents who had already won their previous 2 games but we managed to beat them 1 0 too.
In the 2nd round, we faced a very resilient side but shd have beaten them in normal time. Dunstan was hitting the post and all our attacks were close. Our tactic was the liverpoolian tactic of pump long ball to eugene or hope one counterattack succeeds since we played a formation of 3 1 1 which asked a lot of the two frontmen. we then went to penalty kicks and it was a dreaded thing cos we lost on penalties 2 yrs ago to become 2nd - Nic's famous miss. this time, almost all the members had to take the penalty and thankfully i din miss mine. SY had already saved one penalty but the referee had not blown yet so it dragged til the 6th member and he saved after weijie converted.
in the quarterfinals, we thought we would be meeting the blue team of Maju United which were actually 15 to 16 yr olds from macpherson secondary training for C division title. Our tactic was since they were younger, faster and fitter the only way was to out muscle them but thankfully , the fixture had us pitted against a team which fought literally with the other team. these 2 indian teams had came to blows at the touchline after some rough play and there was a fair bit of taunting where a lot of mediators had to come. there was one aggressor who even taunted the player " YOU CANT CATCH ME" as he accelerated past the defender. it was just fate that we had to play agst them but we took the lead with guoyew scoring after dunstan passed to him. but 2 mins later, gy was adjudged to have pushed agst a attacker and they pulled lvl soon enuff thru the penalty which was saved but the rebound trickled in. however eugene finally used his height to score against them from a dunstan kick in and we passed this round.
in the semis i almost died as i huffed and puffed. we took the lead agst VJO thru dunstan but they equalised with abt 6 mins to go as they sprung a quick counterattk and beat SY at the near post.. however, the penalty shootout again managed to see us triumphant.
the last final was agst the maju united who were one of the best teams as they outplayed a lot of others en route. however, it was a stalemate as both teams nullified each other since we were used to this kind of passing play rather than teams relying on individual brillance. yet again, it had to go down to penalties and despite gy missing the first one, SY and dunstan scored as we were crowned as champions.
1st prize was $180 cash, 2nd was $120 while 3rd was $60. We then made a decision to donate the prize money back to the rotaract club, stunning the organizers.. after all, half our team was already working. and we bought the yep t shirts wif the money too.. only eugene was the asshole who din contribute to the poor laos chn fund. but actually this fund raising actually reduces the cost of what yep pple have to pay. but it was a gd feeling doing a gd deed and i cant believe our team THE UNDERDOGS won yet again.
posted by Mervyn at 12:20 AM
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