Soccer Fellowship Report [4th Apr]

The showers that poured down just after mid-day worried a few but most were confident that fine weather would follow...and they were proved right. By the time 3pm arrived, the sun was shining brightly above East Spring Sec and about 28 players gathered for a time of Soccer Fellowship. The Pentecost Pandas (in Red) and Panthers (in Blue) took the opportunity to play a practice match before the Agape Cup 2009 kick-off, with Soccer Community members evenly distributed on both sides.

Before the match started, Maurice led us in a time of devotion, using Argentina's recent 6-1 humiliation to Bolivia to illustrate that giants can be slayed, even by minnows. Using the story of David and Goliath from the Bible to further emphasise this point, Maurice concluded that with God on our side, we can indeed humble the giants that we face in our lives.

As the teams lined-up against each other, one could see that the Reds had more prowess in central midfield, while the Blues had speedy wingers. Much of the match would be played out along these lines. It was the Reds who started brightly, controlling the match from midfield and allowing few chances for the Blues to pass the ball. With Derrick and Kee Min controlling the midfield for the Reds and Mark Leong marshalling the defence well, it seemed that all would go well for the Reds this Saturday. However, this was not to be. From a Reds throw-in close to the Blues penalty area, the Reds lost the ball and a fast counter-attack saw the ball move from Jingzhong on the left, to Darren on the right, who squared the ball to David Sng who made no mistake from 2 yards out. Pegged back by the goal, the Reds pressed for the equaliser. A few chances fell their way but it took a goal-mouth melee for the ball to find its way the Justin, who fired a stiff grounder into the net. The score remained at 1-1 till halftime.

In the 2nd half, both teams sought to win the match. The Reds did a little re-shuffling, with Ronnie moving into midfield. The Blues stuck to their game plan and defence of Daniel, David Teong, Jeremy Sin and Bryan held the Reds well. A series of corners by the Reds aimed to unsettle the Blues, but this did not happen. On one of these corners, the Reds again lost possession of the ball to spark a Blues counter-attack, leading to a goal by Jingzhong (I think). The speed of the Blues was posing the Reds lots of problems. At the same time, although the Reds were finding their way into key areas of the pitch, either the final ball into the box or the finishing touch eluded them. It was again from a Reds corner that the Blues sprung a counter attack to go up 3-1, Damien racing clear to chip the keeper Joel with a sweet left foot shot. It was only through the last kick of the game that Jeremy from the Reds managed to prod the ball past Blues keeper Michael to end the match at 3-2 to the Blues.

Ronnie conducted a short post-mortem, pointing out key areas for improvement before the Agape Cup campaign begins. One of these areas include needing to go in for 50-50 balls and being committed to retain possession.