Rain again threatened this Agape Cup fixture, but good weather prevailed and we managed to play as planned. Having already had to change his plans due to Daniel's ankle injury (sustained during futsal on Friday), Adrian's tweaked game-play was further challenged by Kee Min, who arrived late and could only start on the bench. As such, Kevin was brought into the starting line-up instead of being on the bench as originally planned. A 'shuffled' PMC 11 started in a 4-1-4-1 formation:
Kelvin
Marcus - Weijie - Mark - Damien
Dominic
Jacob - Kevin - Martin - Jingzhong
Steve
Players being inspected before kick-off
It was clear from the whistle that the match was going to be tough, with opponents challenging every ball and being quite physical, yet fair. In the middle of the park, there was lack of positional discipline to win the ball and control it if won, leading to much of the possession being at the feet of HFC, or the All Blacks as they are called. HFC's set pieces also threatened, and on one such occasion in the 10th minute, they scored their first goal. A throw-in to the feet of HFC's resident Frenchman on the edge of the box saw him leave Kevin in his wake, evade Mark, and then send a cross into the box which was not dealt with decisively. The striker had the simplest of tasks to place it into the corner of the net. It was an early setback which PMC could not recover from.
Martin doing his best to keep the ball
Steve fights for everything despite being isolated for most of the match
Marcus tries to help PMC gain ground via a throw-in
Soon, HFC's 2nd goal arrived. Again, due to too much space being given to HFC, their right winger was able to deliver a pinpoint cross to their giant striker Sasi, who made no mistake from close range. With the team being 2-0 down within 20min, Adrian had to take action immediately and took off Kevin and Jacob, who were replaced by Kee Min and Rusydi. The line-up was also slightly tweaked with Kee Min going into the DM role and Marcus moving to LB, while Damien moved to RB. The shape was better and this allowed PMC to gain some possession and make breaks on goal. However, chances were few and far between. The halftime score read 2-0.
Adrian making sure the team keep their heads up for the 2nd half
All eyes on the 1st Team Coach
The 2nd half of the match started with PMC going for goal. Possession had clearly swung in our favour with forays down the wing, and Steve fighting for every ball. However, the HFC defence was hard to break down and there were few clear-cut chances. It was thus unfortunate that our own defensive lapses cost us another 2 goals quite late in the match. The set-plays were identical. Corners floated in to the box, with an unmarked man having the simplest tasks of nodding the ball into goal to the bewilderment of GK Sean and the defenders. The 4-0 scoreline was tough to bear. With Marcus going down injured, Wei En had a decent run-out and then so did Yi Jun and David, who also tried their best to pull a goal back, but to no avail. Hopefully, this would be the heaviest defeat this Agape Cup season for the PMC team.
To read a summary of the match from our opponent's perspective, click HERE.
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