SCS Cup 2013 Match Report: OLD vs CMC (15th September)

Team OLD returned to competitive football after a hiatus of 3 years, with many team mates not seeing each other for quite a while. The team also welcomed quite a number of new faces such as Alvin Chan, Eddie Wong, Eddie Boh and Vincent Ang. Having not played together at all prior to this match, the aim was clearly to just enjoy the run-out and hope for the best. With the average age of the team in the high 40s, everyone's expectations were reasonable given the relative youth of the opponents.

Before the match, Mark Chan from CMC started the usual pre-match proceedings of devotions, and shared about his past week and the reality of God during that time.

The match kicked off with CMC only having 11 players and OLD having 14. However, it was evident from the start that the team in white were clearly going to exploit their quickness to unsettle their older opponents. The exchange in the first 5min was quite even, with both teams probing and trying to find a breakthrough. OLD came the closest during this time when a half-cleared cross found its way to Eddie Wong to rifled a fierce shot at goal, which the CMC GK was able to parry away. From then however, it was CMC who threatened more and by the 10th min, they got their first goal when a cross was inadvertently turned into his own net by Felix. Being 1-0 up, the CMC players kept on pegging away and a combination of long, short balls as well as speedy wing play meant that the floodgates had started to open, as OLD conceded 4 more times before the interval. It wasn't that OLD was playing particularly badly, as they managed to pass and control the ball in periods, but schoolboy errors in defence led to easy goals being let in. It also didn't help that Mark Leong had to limp off mid-way through the first half, leaving some re-organisation in the defensive ranks.

The 2nd half started with CMC reduced to 10 men as they had a player injured. The irony of the situation was despite being a man short, they opened the scoring when a stand-offish defence allowed the CMC striker to waltz his way right through to a one-on-one situation against Sean. This happened a 2nd time, before OLD woke up and scored a good goal, playing the ball out of defence, and Kevin threading it through to Eddie Wong, who finished nicely from the left. At 7-1, the referee decided to award CMC a penalty when Eddie Boh brought down a CMC player in the box, allowing CMC to score their 8th goal. What stunned everyone was that directly from the kick-off, Eddie Wong blasted the ball into the top corner of the net with some wonderful technique, to make it 8-2. The score stayed that way despite some good work from OLD in trying to pull more goals back, but the many crosses sent into the box by David Sng could not be converted, ending OLD's return to competitive football.