Match 107 - Win

Songbo FC 4:2 Opponents

Date: 31th May 2009
Venue: Pioneer Sec Sch
Jersey: Black

Starting Line-Up:
Yanshou(GK), H.Weijie(LB), Kenny(CB), Suichao(CB), Kaiseng(RB), Hweequan(DM), Jackie(LM), Alvin Cai (CM), Junbing(AM), Sybian(RM), Jeremy(ST)

Subtitutes:
Kelvin, Mervin, Rujia, Jiaxiang


HT: 3-1
FT: 4-2

Match Report:


Pioneer secondary school, my first match wif songbo fc on this ground… it’s a good win for us.
4-2 was the final score. Jacky, sybian, yanshou and myself score for songbo-fc.


Jeremy

FICO League

Just received this in my e-mail........

Latest fund standings

Previous standings is 75

$75 - $ 5 (Fico 1) - $ 8 ( Fico 2) - $15 ( Fico 3) - $8 (Fico 4) + $10 (Blog Fine) - $8 ( Match )

= $ 41

We still waiting for jackie to pay us $ 10 as fine.. at the rate the fines are going out think we should have enough for a mid yr function..

Match 106 - Win

Songbo FC 2:1 Opponents

Date: 24th May 2009
Venue: Fuhua Sec Sch
Jersey: Black

Starting Line-Up:
Junbing (GK), H.Weijie(LB), Kenny (CB), Suichao(CB), Kaiseng (RB), Hweequan(DM), Jiaxiang (LM), Alvin Cai (CM), Yanshou (AM), Sybian (RM), Jeremy (ST)

Subtitutes:
Kelvin, Mervin


HT: 0-0
FT: 2-1

Match Report:

Fuhua Sec Sch is not a ground that brings back good memories for Songbo FC; their record there is mediocre, they lost several balls due to over-zealous players practising their shots but most significant of all, they lost their hard-man Yanshou to career-threatening injury that ruled him out for several months. In fact, coming into the match, they have lost a few good men due to injuries as well. Binghong was still nursing his leg injury after his surgery and Tan Weijie also carried a knock that ruled him out of the game. The worst was that the team received saddening news that their Captain had been hospitalised due to Hepatitis a fortnight ago. However, Rujia has been discharged after observation and arrives on match day to provide valuable moral support to the team.

The rising temperatures can be easily felt by the players who were sweating profusely simply by jogging around the field. Matter were made worse by the poor timekeeping of the opponents; by the proposed match time, only 8 of their players had turned up. Nevertheless, after some delays, they had their full squad ready and the match went on.

The starting line-up of Songbo FC yielded a surprise; Alvin, the vice captain standing in for Rujia, made his decision to field Yanshou, who havent started in an outfield position for months, as the support striker behind Jeremy. The backline was the familiar 4 for Songbo FC, with both Suichao and Kenny shaking of their injuries. Midfield was to be marshalled by Alvin in the middle, Hweequan covering the defense, Jiaxiang to be dispatched to the left and Sybian to the right.

It was a nervy start for Songbo FC, who haven't played in about a month, and unforced errors were being made periodically. However, the opponents couldn't really find a way through their defense. Their only real chance came when their striker managed a shot towards Junbing. Even though the ball was going wide, Junbing took no chances and pushed it out for a corner. The first half was pretty much the standard game of attrition. There was bright spark though; Yanshou, who played his last outfield game so long ago, didn't look uncomfortable at all on his return. His touches, though rusty, still had purpose and one slick pass almost paved the way for Jeremy to open his account for the day. The half ended 0-0.

The second half picked up from where the first half ended, with Songbo FC looking more likely to break the duck. One chance saw Yanshou through and he could only muster a shot right at the keeper even though he was 1-on-1. A similar chance for Jeremy saw the same outcome. Songbo FC was trying and they got the breakthrough they needed. A slick move saw the goal kick to Sybian being flicked neatly to Yanshou. Wasting no time, he slid the ball to Jeremy to send him through and this time, he made no mistake to add to his bulging tally of goals. 1-0 Songbo FC.

Songbo FC had a few more chances to widen the gap, with Kelvin wasting another 1-on-1 situation. Sometimes, they have the luck to ride a 1-0 scoreline till the final whistle but on this particular field, this luck seems to always elude them. Near the 3rd quarter of the game, while Hweequan was trying to clear the ball, he was uphended by an opponent. Despite the obvious foul and with almost the whole defense expecting a whistle to be blown, play went on and the ball found its way into the penalty area. Concentration lapsing, the defense failed to cover the angles of an inevitable shot and was punished by a well-placed shot into the bottom corner of the net. 1 apiece and Songbo FC was furious.

With time ticking away, it seemed that Songbo FC's rotten luck on this ground was to continue. Things work in strange ways though; some good defending saw Kenny in possession of the ball. A long ball played Kelvin through on the left. Using his speed, he was able to shake off his opponent to deliver a pin-point pass into the area for Jeremy to finish it off to send Songbo FC into delirium. 2-1 the final score!

Report By: Mervin

Some photos to share

Alvin's Birthday at Bin's House

Look at those undeveloped bodies


Guess whose body is this?

Answer coming up.......

Xiao Hong!!!

Charting The Way Ahead

With the recent inactivity on the field, I think I can take this time to post some plans that I have conceived for our team. Please note that all plans are still in an infant stage and is welcome to changes.


15th Anniversary PhotoBook

This has been first brought up while we were on our Perak Trip. We have decided to start work on it once we hit late June, starting with data collection first (mostly photos that you guys have from our younger years). Please contribute generously to this as we just need to loan your precious photos for about a month as we scan and collate them. We are then expected to start on the design and layout as well as captioning of the photobook once we hit early August. Projected completion date for now is early October. Members in this project: Yanshou (Design and Layout), Kenny (Data Management) and Mervin (Editorial and Captioning).


15th Anniversary Dinner

I remember I first suggested this while I was still in Taiwan to Rujia. Yes guys, it has been 15 years (for most of us) from 1995 - 2009. Therefore I was thinking of holding a dinner event to commemorate this milestone for us. This is still pretty much a suggestion and for now I am proposing that we hold a catered buffett in a condo's clubhouse that we can book. Wives, kids, girlfriends and potential girlfriends are all welcome. This will probably be held in mid October so as not to clash with Tan's wedding dinner. The photobook is to be ready by then for distribution at the dinner. I was thinking if we could have our AGM during then but I guess we should just leave it for our Christmas Party at the end of the year. Suggestions and comments for this are very welcomed.


More Plans for the Blog

We have been looking at this blog for the past few years and there's always been minor tweaks here and there. As I will be ORDing soon (finally my turn) I will have some time on my hands to make some improvements for our blog. Suggestions for improvements will be appreciated. Current plan is to have an individual profile page for each of us where we can view our statistics for current and past seasons. More to come on this.

FICO sessions during mid-week and on non match weeks.

Team, in the past two weeks, we have had 2 sessions of late night Fico sessions. I think the sessions were enjoyable and one thing for sure, it helps us to sweat it out.

These 2 sessions have shown that we can have a kick-about and improve ourselves. For me, I have realised that I am so much more clumsy and have lost a lot of my ability to control the ball properly. In addition, touches became trapping for opponents and ability to react under intense pressure have waned.

This shows how much technical ability I have lost over the past seasons. I mean i am not that good technically in the first place....but the point is I know I used to be better than now - a lot more. It may be due to increasing weight causing sluggish-ness but i suspect that the main culprit is the lack of exposure to a fast-paced game of soccer.

We used to ply our trade at the BB court where we play fast pace, one touch and high intensity football. Granted, they are different from field football but I see that certain positives can be obtained if we were to stick to a regular Fico session. For one, it increases our ability of decision making under constant pressure. Fitness will be improved due to the "interval-training" type of running we do in Fico. Technical ability which is very much the emphasis in Fico, will definitely be improved over time and this might be the pivotal factor when we play our weekend encounters.

As of now, I feel a 1 hour session is about just nice for fun and sweat. Once we get in gear, i think we would be craving to play a 2-hr session.


The point of this post is to gather feedback and of course seek opinion for a regular session.

Pls comment as per below...(Everyone to comment pls, we do everything as a team!!!)

1.) Feedback of previous 2 sessions. Any lessons learnt?

2.) Would you like a regular session? If yes, day/time pls.

3.) Any other comments?

Competitive Soccer - Part 2 (summary of comments)

Some of us have given their thoughts and views to the suggestions while some have either refused to comment or are just plain lazy....:)

I think thru the comments, many valid points were brought up and they are the result of the efforts of those who bothered to comment and contribute...Give yourself a pat on the back for that!!

Concerns

1.) Commitment - My view is that it does not take more commitment out of us than now. Maybe it will require a mid-week fico or something but we can do without it if majority feels its not necessary or its hard to get a common date for that.

2.) Team depth - Well, this is indeed the most glaring problem. But i am sure we can work something out if we want to. Ideally, we only accept players who are on the same wavelength as us and can accept suanning and tauntings.hahahahaha!! but seriously, we can look into many possibilities and avenues.

3.) Team ability - Like Captain has said many times, we are a team that are weaker in technical abilities but we overcome that by our teamwork and understanding. Our years of friendship and gatherings have imbued in us the spirit of not doing it for ourselves but for the team. We have many examples where we have won thru sheer hard work and team tactical discipline. this should be carried on. In addition, I think Kenny mentioned that we have played with his team(who is in the league) and we won...so I dun think we will be facing player like sundramoothy or the likes la...haha!!

4.) Team Spirit - Ah seng and kelvin have noted that currently we enjoy our post match bickerings and suannings at the coffeeshops. He is concerned that if we were to be in the league, this spirit might be affected if we take thing too seriously and affect our status quo. As such kelvin who was a former supporter of joining the league now prefers to enjoy his week end games than fight for more glory in support of current team spirit.

My Stance (not representative of anyone)

1.) We are getting old - now is the age when our bones starts to deterioriate - according to medical journals - and if we do not attempt to play in the league as a team soon, we may see the exit of some players due to retirement from injury! This is no joke...because we are at the age of thinking and doing things for our future and family and children. your mentality is totally different....so I doubt we will want to join when we are older, have more family commitments and are more health conscious.

2.) Better team spirits - Seriously, I think thru the league, we can enhance team spirit! There needs to be more communication and meet ups and I can only see team spirit getting stronger unless of course we have more inter-gals problem(pun intended)!!!! haha.. I envisaged that we will try and tell one another and encourage one another to improve our games - be it thru kopi or thru training or tactical session.

3.) Not much difference from now - Actually if you are to think deeper, we are indirectly in a league of our own right now - the referees league. You can see that most of the time the opponents are from the referees and some teams we do play a couple of time b4 and some many times. I doubt we will get many other NEW OPPONENTS unless we venture out from the referees league or the referees find new "customers"...LOL.

4.) More professional - The proposed league to join handles things in a very professional manner and this can only increase our team's own attitudes and professionalism.
Fixtures will be out in pre-season...so we can all know when we are playing who and we can know in advance which date we should make ourelves free, barring emergencies, and inform team captain if necessary about unfree dates.
Relegation/promotion system - For example we decide to enrol in the Sunday leagues and there are a lot of teams. We will be allocated a division where our ability is about the same as the opponents. SO there might be a total of 11 divisions in the Sunday league and the fun thing is the top 2 and bottom 2 are promoted/ relegated amongst these divisions! So the challenge is that if we do well and finish top two, the reward is tougher opponents!! How can we not improve then???
Points deduction for teams that are late!! - There is a penalty for teams that are late and this is met with a 2 points deduction from the table points. Thsi will make sure most opponenst are on time.
Referees are all certified and of good standards! - you dun get the normal nonsense "tan jiak ka" who just come to the games for a stroll and expect to be paid for nonsense work done. there is also a feedback system for referees so if he doesn't do well, he will be "pok".
Sports drinks provided - I think I read somewhere that all matches in the leagues will have drinks sponsered at teh match venue.
Suspension system - Red card equals one match suspension. No limits on yellow though.


Wa very long post.....will update again... the fuc*ing rule book very long...haven finish reading...wil update the rules and regulation again....