Kumar trips Alan as a posse of blue shirts gather around him inside the penalty area.
Alan makes the near post run at the corner but it's Ah Tong at the far post who scores by running to the middle - which makes me ask "what was his marker doing?"
Derek wonders why he has 2 Hoongs on his paper...
The guys applaud Jimmy's wonder strike.
Yes, that's the tactics board. Now with missing magnets!
However the highlight of the first half was the near brawl on the pitch between Mikez and the Chinese Wanderers player manager. Nobody had a clue what triggered it but there was a lot of shouting going on between the little and large man. We thought it was all over but after the Wanderers number 9 kicked out at Mikez after he had tackled the big guy, the shouting started again - and coach Derek had to walk Mikez out before the match was abandoned. However the coach also felt that the referee should have sent off the number 9 for a very deliberate attack on Mikez's heels.
Heng (red shirt) was invited to play for us but he ended up on the red team instead!
My memories of this match are vague but I remember it was a really hot day and that Ramblers were playing two pitches away from us. It was also going to be my last game before I went to England so I wanted to leave Penang with a bang and score lots of goals so I settled with two goals in the 2nd half.
A match at USM's stadium is always a pleasure because of the mint condition of the pitch and the feel of professionalism with stadium overlooking the green turf. Sadly the running track makes every long clearance difficult to recover but it turned out to work in our favour as it turned out our opponents were Malaysian Cup competitors - otherwise known as a fully professional squad!
With this in mind, it was a good thing that Ramblers players (and our Butterfly goalkeeping coach, Tony) were there to bolster the playing squad because USM were the real thing. Their two touch passes left us feeling dizzy and they attacked both sides of our defence with vigour and energy. Whilst Viet was 'coping' on the right, his fellow Vietnamese player Duc was struggling on the left with the absurd pace that the right winger had. This meant that Fajar had to work overtime to cover his fellow international player. However the international coach, Derek, was doing his own share of hard work in midfield with the Langkawi boy, Poay alongside him. Whilst they were able to string a neat set of passes together, they were unable to get near striking distance of the goal.
First Half Team:
Samson spent most of his time like this - i.e. without the ball as the midfielders struggled to provide any service to one of the number 10s and his partner Hung. Whilst he was attempting to make runs and drift into open areas, a very energetic City Bayview team managed to stifle the passes from the centre to their defending third.
Fajar provided most of the attacking highlights, from the left wing, with his usual mazy runs whilst Vincent looked for more direct through balls from the right. The Indonesian came closest through a direct free kick which was on target but it was easily gathered by the goalkeeper and whilst he managed to get the ball in the net on another occasion, he was given offside by the referee.
Jimmy also had his chances as he just failed to beat the goalkeeper to this through ball when running from midfield. Indeed most of the attacking threat came from runners coming from the middle third of the pitch whilst the strikers tired to play them in. But for all their hard work, the KDU team in the first half struggled to make the orange clad goalkeeper worry about the ball crossing the line.
15 players represented KDU FC in their blue shirts
Two CRC international players found themselves on opposite teams!
Another victim of a (perfect legal) Bill tackle lays prostrate on the floor.
A happy Hung with his two goalsIf we started with 11 players, i think it would've been rally interesting to see what the scoreline would've been, but then, its just a friendly and besides, the boys had an important presentation and can't be fully blamed for the 3-0 in the first half. We could've won though, if our strikers had more composure on the ball, especially in the final 3rd quarter of the field in the opposition half and there are players of ours who are lacking stamina. discipline is another i'd like to mention, because without discipline, one can't achieve much or as far as one could. Positioning of the back, especially the fullbacks is also important (Vic, there's no offside rule for throw ins) and as always, midfielders or at least one must come down to help defend or protect the back 4. the first half may have been disappointing, but at least from the 2nd half we can take some positives from the game. We played to our strengths (such as a couple of pairs of fresh legs) and we dominated the 2nd half. Didn't you guys felt good after that? The Air Force game was our first win for KDU of the season, lets NOT make it the last, shall we, boys? KDU in the HOUSE Mikez 16 |
The three musketeers return to position after piercing the enemy's defence
