*Note: Pictures have been added! Click on the thumbnails for a larger picture.

In a breathless account, Jun Zhe, one of our hockey players, tells us from firsthand experience the highlights of the sport that kickstarted IHG –

2nd Jan was the first day of IHG. The first combat was Hockey. As we all know, KE hockey has always been a strong team that makes even Eusoff and Temasek worry a lot!
Last year we got 3rd place, behind Eusoff and Temasek. But this year, under the leadership of Kumar, we were aiming for the the championship.
The bus left KE at 7 am, and arrived at Delta Hockey Pitch at 7 30am.

Eusoff:
After doing some warm-up, it was time for our first long-awaited match, against Eusoff, one of the strongest teams. Actually, we’d just played a FRIENDLY against Eusoff, just a few days ago. On that day we lost the game by 0 - 1, without some key-players whom we called “secret weapons”. Therefore, today we were confident that we had the chance to beat them.
It was a very fierce match. Even the cheering teams were competing with each other. Our KE players took some time to get into the game, and Eusoff of course did not let any chance go and kept attacking us. In the first half they eventually got one goal off a short corner during a penalty. In the second half, KE finally found itself and performed very well. We got some chances to score, but what we needed was just a little luck.
At last the whistle ended the game. We had lost the first match by one point. It was not a good start, but encouraged by Kumar, Hafiz and Terence, we eventually came out of the shadow of our loss and got ready for the second one, against Sheares Hall.

(Final score KE vs EH: 0 - 1)

Sheares:
Sheares Hall is not weak, and they have got one national player (NO.1), who got 5 scores in the match against Raffles. But their team was only a one-man team and the whole match is a one-man show. So we sent our NO. Seventeen [Editor: a mysterious player who bears the name "Seventeen" on his jersey and pretends not to be Jian Xiang] to man mark him and run all the field with him to stop him or force him to pass the ball to other players. This strategy proved to work very well. Finally we got one score and beat them by 1 - 0!

(Final score KE vs SH: 1 - 0)

Temasek:
We knew that Temasek was even better than Eusoff, so for this match we were more focused on defence. We adjusted our formation and emphasized a lot on our Umbrella, which we deployed for defence. Actually we did a very good job during this game. The last time we played a friendly against them, we lost by 2 goals. But this time we gave them very few chances and were in a position to score goals several times! The final score of the game was 0 - 0 . Temasek had under-estimated us, and after the match you could see the disappointment and amazement on their faces!

(Final score KE vs TH: 0 - 0)

Kent Ridge:
We knew that “We must win this game in order to lock the 3rd place!” Before the match, we were warned that we should never under-estimate any opponents. KR had even scored the first goal in the match against Eusoff, although they eventually lost it by 1 - 2. Throughout the game, we fought very hard, and under our constant attack the ball was always kept in their half of the field. We got many chances and finally we won this match by 2 - 0. Actually we had the potential to score even more!

(Final score KE vs KR: 2 - 0)

Raffles:
This was the last match. We all knew that we could win this match, but the problem was how many points we could win. We had to score 4 goals if we wanted to lock 2nd place. Things were going exactly as we wished as we scored the first goal off a short corner at the first 3 mins. It seemed that we were on the way to 2nd place! But after that LUCK appeared to desert us, and we could not score although we had so many chances. Once the ball even hit the beam of the gate and bounced back! In addition, Raffles was deliberately slowing the pace of the game to minimise their losses; during each serve of the ball, they waited for a very long time before hitting the ball out. The time was running out slowly and when the final whistle sounded we still had only one goal, despite having been able to control the ball 90% of the time. Everyone looked very down. But there is always an element of uncertainty in the outcome of games, and these things cannot really be controlled by people.

(Final score KE vs RH: 1 - 0)

The eventual order was: Eusoff 1st place, Temasek 2nd, and we KE in 3rd place -

Go KE Hockey!! We all believe that next year YOU can go further!!

It is not a bad start to our IHG. We should believe that we can have a great result in all the games!!

KE Rocks!!

- Jun Zhe

====================

A spectator’s point of view

Well done hockey guys! Kumar, Dominic (who both have exams this week!), Hafiz, Anh, Terence, Jun Zhe, “Seventeen”, “oo7″ (also known as Jon from M1), Mingchang, Vincent, Xinke, Suhas and Musa.. not forgetting our towering goalkeeper Nesa who made more than a few splendid saves! Especially in that good show against Temasek, whose reputation for machine-like efficiency “scares the hell out of everyone”… but not you! There’ll be another chance for the Championship next year!

As a spectator, watching Hockey in IHG for the first time, I was impressed by the solidarity of the team and the loyalty of the supporters, who came down despite the early timing. Supporters were a motley mix. There were old Hockey loyalists like Kee and Ian Mathews. In a very restrained show of bloodlust, Ian encouraged the team to “break their legs!” (before turning to me with, “You’re first aid certified, aren’t you?”) Kee laments that he has not been able to play hockey for the 6 months since he graduated! Also lending support and lung power were Jin Xi, the ex-captain of the girls’ team, and some of the Hall Play cast members who came down after morning rehearsal in time for the match against Sheares. Other loyal KEVIIans such as Shahzad led the way in terms of volume, from time to time bellowing “GO MR PRESIDENT! SHOW US WHY WE ELECTED YOU!” across the pitch. Also in evidence were hockey newbies like Jia Hui from JCRC and myself… Which shows that you don’t have to know anything about a game to be a supporter! We hope the turnout for the rest of the IHG games will be even better

- Joanna

Interesting facts for IHG idiots:

1. Do you know what are the colours of the 6 different halls? (Answers below)

2. Did you know that the hockey pitch is kept wet so that the ball can stick better? Every few matches, powerful sprinklers come on and water the pitch!

3. Did you know that the hockey goalkeepers wear so much protection (helmet, padding on chest, arms and legs and enormous padded shoes) that they seem almost double in size?

(Answers to hall colours: KE7 - RED (you should know this!!), Sheares - Orange, Eusoff - Yellow, Kent Ridge - Blue, Temasek - White, Raffles - Green)

* * *

Your next chance to support KE Hockey will be Girls’ Hockey on Thursday, 4 Jan, at Delta Hockey Pitch next to Redhill MRT. The schedule is as follows:
9.05am KE vs EH
10.50am KE vs SH
12-12.30pm lunch
1.10pm KR vs KE
2.55pm KE vs RH
5.15pm TH vs KE

See you there!