Sunday Evening At Turf City (4) - 14 August 2011

Good game yesterday but Reds were too strong for Whites. We had two new players David and Wei Kee and both could play and were good. Think Reds won 7-3 if not mistaken

Will let Damian to do the report.

As for line ups:

Aug 14, 2011 12:54:50 GMT 8 Rajiv said:

Nick is also asking to play, so we have 6 reserves, and I think we could easily have gotten another 4 or 5, if not 8, to have a second game. Unfortuantely, I can't do an extra game this weekend, but I will do one from next weekend onwards.

I suggest:

Whites: Look Liew, Kum Kong, Titus, Cheng Poh, Foo Cheong, Tan Wee,Tristan, Fred
Reds: Wei Kee, Wing Kong, Dave H, Rajseran, Lynz, Damian, David T, Elvin

Any comments?

Everyone, please bring both a white top and a red top in any event.

As Wei Kee is new, I'll ask him to look out for Damian or Rajseran.

....

and

Aug 14, 2011 15:59:33 GMT 8 Rajiv said:

Lynz caught the original line ups when first posted, and pointed out that Whites had no runners and were older players, so I swapped him with Tan Wee (as shown amended above). Look Liew later SMSed that Whites don't have a play-maker and suggested that either Rajseran or Elvin switch to Whites. That would be ok, except I'm not sure who I'd switch over from Whites to Reds. I'd usually swap the player making the comment, but then I'm sure Look Liew wouldn't want to be on the opposing side to his friends.

I'll leave it to the players at the game itself.

No changes in the line ups I presume.

Add any other comments below.

Looking unbalanced, Raj reminded me several times that REDs had 2 new players n we should play 15-20 min first - I said sure, play Lao.

35 min later and w REDs up 6 - 1, Raj says let's swap.........to which a few of the whites including Titus, KK n myself said " don't worry la, just play " but Foo Cheong gamely swapped..........w Raj.

Final score REDs won 9 - 3 still with WHITEs comprehensively outplayed.

Hard to predict if team is balance or not especially when you have 2 new players in a team . But somehow the new guys played well . I guess when Rajiv comes up with the line up he normally considers all this factors . Anyway was still a good game but the change was necessary half way through to keep the match competitive .

It's just a game.

Look Liew did suggest a change and I did agree with him, just that I wasn't sure who to swap. Perhaps I should have just swapped Look Liew, as per the general rule:

Sept 26, 2010 10:17:57 GMT 8 Rajiv said:

....

It's not a perfect science, and sometimes, we will get it wrong. ....

I'll do the line ups for a while. If anyone thinks the side they are on is significantly weaker, you can let me know, and I will switch you to the other side.

....

Also:

Jul 26, 2011 17:42:52 GMT 8 Rajiv said:

....

Trying to keep friends/relatives or players who are familiar with each other on the same team can distort the balance. Hopefully, as players get to know each other better, these factors will be less relevant.

We shouldn't forget that there is nothing at stake in our regular games other than having a good run out.

In any event, there was a player swap at 6-1, which improved the balance (3-2 after the swap?), so for me, that's the end of the matter.

No biggie lah...with all the vicissitudes of life we are lucky if we can get a balanced game 80% of the time Can't expect perfect balance all of the time, though at times when you are in the obviously weaker side, its good to see how the team/individuals react...whether they are give-uppers or fighters. Even more encouraging is when the weaker team reacts positively and in such cases, its not "if you won or not" but "how you lost" that really matters. To be fair to Raj, with the unknowns and also coupled with the fact that Whites were 1 short at the begining as Titus was a little late, it was anybody's guess how the game would have turned out. So keeping to the lineups was a good call all things considered. In any event, with Raj swapping over in the last 25mins, things did even out somewhat as Whites managed to claw back another 2 goals (thanks to me too at the end. End of the day, hindsight is always perfect vision! Both LL and myself know how hard it is actually to do a simple thing like line-ups and thats why no one has taken over this rather onerous task from Jiv who has graciously been undertaking this rather unwanted and unrewarding but nonetheless necessary task from the start Thanks Jiv!!

So on to the game itself........Reds started off playing a really good passing game ala Arsenal/Barca style! We really made full use of the wide wing play with our 2 Davids! Dave on the left and newcomer David and on the right. In fact most of our goals originated from the wings.

Fortunately for Reds, David and Wei Kee newcomers adapted quickly to the game and had excellent debuts!! Wei Kee kept good watch on the leftback position also giving able support to Dave on the wing with nice interchanging passes and 1-2s. Whilst David on the right had this amazing ability to pierce the defence and create all kinds of trouble either with his thru passes to the waiting Elvin or Lynz in the center. He also combined well with the front players and tearing the White defence as they had to deploy additional defenders to block his crosses after he broke through.

With Raj in center defence and Kong (right) and Wei Kee left, I had a pretty boring first 15mins in goal. Raj did his part to even up the teams by volunteering to go in goal and that did indirectly create the 1st goal for Whites due to (yet another deflection off my toe 2 weeks in a row) which caused the ball the roll out of Raj's reach and roll agonisingly slowly towards the goal which was mercifully finished off by quickest to react Fred who stabbed it into the goal.

At the back, with only Fred in attack whilst the rest were kept busy by the number of Red passes in mid and attack, there wasn't many shots at goal for Whites. However, this changed after Titus decided to come up to attack together with Fred and Tan Wee. Things started to get hairy for Reds but for some unfortunate misses by Whites.

Their 2nd goal came about again courtesy of myself (in fact I had a part to play in all 3 of their goals!) after Raj switched over to Whites, he hit a tentative shot from midfield which I did not even bother to attempt to catch as it looked like it was going out but instead it went in top left hand corner!!! My Bad Reds!! Raj, then scored Whites 3rd goal from within the penalty box after some excellent build up play supported by Tan Wee, Titus and Kum Kong.

For Reds, Kong filled in center defence admirably with his quick intercepts, blocks and good reading of the game. Lynz when not filling in the role of midfield distributor, was himself piercing the heart of the White defence through the middle. Elvin, as usual was the 1 man attacking army and drew about 2 or more defenders with his runs so much so that LL had to literally be man-marking him everytime he touched the ball.

Alas, while Whites scored another 2 goals at 6-1, Reds scored 3 more as well making the final score 9-3.

Notwithstanding the scores, I had a fun time and think in terms of the sunday workout quotient, everyone was happy.

Damian as usual gives most of us or maybe an orgasm after reading his thread . Nicely written and as mentioned I had an enjoyable game even playing for the white after switching . I actually had better work out playing for whites then reds actually

Thanks Damien. Your match write ups are the highlight of my week!
Keep 'em coming lad.....

Another excellent write-up, Damien. I think you shld turn up even if u r not playing to write these great stuff! LL's prevoius reports were a good read as well. In any case, I agree Rajiv has a hard task in selecting balanced teams and has most of the time been pretty fair. This week was a tough one.I think Raj offered to swap to even things up after DaveTand WeiKee whom we haven't played with before had really gd games. I am sure we have had our fair share being on the wrong end of such scores ...frustrating but end of the day, I guess we are just glad that we are able to continue to play the following weeks. Great workout again and look forward to another wkend of soccer!