dead slow

Aper dah Jau, give us wrong directions to tpjc. End up taking cab instead, sucked up my money dry. Not just any money, but my hari raya money. Then when we reached tpjc, we saw this really funny sign, 'DEAD SLOW'. near the school foyer. Nvr ever saw tt before. Match: TPJC 1-1 RJC Scorers: Mat with the yellow band and silver Pulse boots (TP), Geoffrey (RJ) Starting Line up: Mark, WenJuin, Kinyip, Weifan, Joseph, Adzfar, Zhihao, Geoffrey, Sootet, Fairuz, Peiqian The match started evenly, with them making some dangerous forays into our half. Particularly threatening were their main playmaker, Khairul Amri, who was positioned on left midfield, but constantly drifted into the middle to craft out openings for their forwards, and the other player is th tall forward with the puma socks. He could hold the ball well and had the nifty footwork and pace to put our defence on the backpedal countless times. However, the chances soon came for both sides. TPJC burst through the middle after good passing in front of our box. They pushed the ball all the way to the touchline and crossed; the header was blocked by a despairing slide by Kinyip, but the rebound fell to the 'puma-socked' forwards, who chested the ball but volleyed his kick way over the bar. Another chance for them, saw the striker outsprinting Wenjuin our right back. He was one-on-one with Mark our keeper, but his sidefooted shot was centimetres away off target. The next chance for them came when that same striker made some fancy stepovers and crossed at the byeline. His curling cross was met by the head of the golden-boot striker, who headed high and wide, but narrowly wide. Then, we also had our chances. Numerous throughballs were met by Adzfar, our rightmid who keeps bursting forward. All 3 of those throughballs were wrongly judged offside. But we can see where we want the ball to be moving into space now. Then Zhihao our captain also had one chance to score. He was breaking away off a tpjc corner, he intended to throughpass to me, but i was offside. But the ball fell short, it ended up with him again, so he dribbled past the last man for a one-on-one only to sidefoot the ball wide wide off the upright. Another play saw SooTet taking on their rightback to send in a cross to the top of the penalty box. I cushioned a header through for PeiQian who went for the farpost with a grounder that was inches off the post. Play died down even more in second half, what with the countless subs and even hotter whether. ChangWen had 3 chances to score. One, our persistent harassing of the ball caused them to lose possession, then changwen beat 3 defenders, then oliver through pass for chang wen despite desperate pleas for offside. He tried to clip it over the keeper, but he's too big so he blocked the shot. Zhihao also had one chance, almost similar to the first one, but his attempted chip was again foiled by the big keeper. My only chance of the match was late in the half, when a Sootet outswinger from a corner found me umarked. My header was high and wide, but not too wide I think. The goals did come. The first match we ever took a lead. Somebody was felled, should be Chang Wen, just outside their penalty area. Geoffrey stepped up to take a left foot curler that sailed over the keeper and into the roof of the net. Nice! 1-0 to RJ! Then around 10 mins later, their centreback muscled Chunyat off the ball, and dribbled right in the middle before a nice slide-rule pass to their nippy forward who broke our offside trap. He took his time before placing the ball into the far corner, beyond Peiqian (ourstand-in keeper) 's reach. 1-1. That was how it ended. Today, again I was put into starting lineup. Not good for the team because of India trip, but gives me some reassurance. But no point having that when I don't deliver. So must make full use of this break to train hard myself. Give them a good impression of me again when they return. I also gotta return to my old-old-old position at right back because Adzfar pulled his calf muscle after a throw in. Haha, I really don't like tt position. Made a fool of myself trying to collect an aerial ball which i completely missed. Then moved into Attacking Mid. But really had not enough stamina to last that position, and didn't have a complete sense of my whereabouts playing there. Really love only one position: Striker! An out and out striker. Thing I did good today: 1. Set up teammates - The cushion header for peiqian. The constant being offside to distract my marker to allow teammates to run onto throug balls. But need to push deeper to collect more passes to lay-off or connect for one-twos Things that I need to improve: 1. Diagonal runs - to collect through balls, definitely the more direct route to scoring 2. Timing my run - to collect through balls 3. Harassing the defenders - even when chances are low that i will get the ball i wished they had passed more to me. urgh :(