In what was an eventful match played out at Bishan Park Secondary, MiB salvaged a 2-2 draw with Wong's team despite going in at half time 2-0 down. The game will always be remembered for some awwwful refereeing decisions that led to yellow cards for Harvey, Sat, Harish and SK.
Prak started in goal. SK was at right back, Riz and PP made up the centre of defence. Rooban played at left back and had Harvey in front of him on the wing. Sat and Vana controlled the midfield with Harish out wide on the right. Zal supported Maran in attack.
The game started off well enough with MiB starting with ten men as Rooban was late. When he had joined up we continued to enjoy majority of the possession and Vana had a couple of long range shots that came close.
Then out of the blue, after a long punt by their keeper, as Riz headed the ball against the striker, the ref game them a corner. Wanting to outdo himself, he missed a clear push on Prak and the ball trickled in. The ref gleefully blew the whistle. 0-1.
MiB continued to press on and the ref insisted Harvey dived after pushing the ball pass the rightback. It did not matter that he was faster than him or could have gotten the ball if the opponent had not kneed his thigh, that was not a penalty in the ref's book.
Out of the blue off another punt by the keeper, Prak and PP misjudged a ball and this tall angmoh striker nipped in to make it 2-0. MiB kept playing but as usual the ref wanted to be the star of the show missing clear fouls on Rooban and Sat.
After strong words from Sat at half time, MiB came out fired up and could have scored in the first few minutes after good pressure from Zal and Harvey led to Maran shooting just wide.
Then after good work from Harish and Vana, Maran slid in and hammered the ball pass the keeper on his near post. 2-1. Game on.
It was all MiB at this point with wave after wave of attack. Vana came so close to scoring when he burst through from midfield but slid the ball just wide. At this point the ref felt he was not in the picture, so when Harvey burst down the left wing to break clear, he judged that the ball had crossed the line eventhough he was on the other side of the pitch. Even the opponents started laughing at this point.
But MiB kept plugging away and after regaining possession in midfield, Sat slid a delicious ball to Harvey who controlled and finished past the keeper. 2-2 and there looked to be one winner only.
MiB started to have waves of corners. Off one delivery from Maran, a defender wrapped both his arms around Harvey, and hugged him tight. Harvey screamed at the ref, who saw the whole situation, as the defender continued to hold him desperate to give away the penalty, but the ref said Play on. Unbelievable. Worse was to follow when he clearly missed 2 blatant handballs by the opponent strikers that led to goalscoring chances. Sat had obviouly had enough and screamed at the ref "Oei ref you want me to buy you glasses ah?!". He got a yellow card. Lucky for us he did not take up Sat's offer, judging from the half a thousand dollars Philbert paid for his specs.
About 10 mins from the end, off another MiB corner, as Harvey lined up to volley the ball, he twisted his left knee badly and had to be taken off. MiB played out the last few minutes a man down but Ben from CJC helped us out a bit at the end.
The opponents grew confident and had a couple of corners, off which the striker headed it towards goal and reeled away in celebration, only for SK to dive and head it away.
Game ended 2-2. Great comeback from the guys but we will feel we should have won. No one played well in the 1st half, but in the 2nd, I think the whole team played decently well to come back. Special mention to Maran who did not stop running throughout the game, picking up a leaf from Dirk Kuyt's book. On another day he would have scored a hat trick.
Did i mention the ref was awful?
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