Pubz Comm Reporter: Puneeth N
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Our hall’s Male Hockey team, which was one of the leading teams in the NUS, was not to be seen this year. Instead, we had to make a great transition to floorball. The worst thing was that we had only a couple of months to do the change, and the better part was that we had a captain named Jonathan Kwong (or JOnk :) ), who had the experience of playing floorball.
The 27th of January was the day on which the transition skills of our team were to be tested. The team was made up of some stalwarts like Hafiz(Sr.), Terence and Florian and, not to forget, our captain Jonk and vice-captain Musa, who all helped the freshmen to settle into the squad very smoothly. We had good depth in our squad, thus we were able throw in up to four lines of players into the fray. We also had some very good freshmen like Michael, Hongyi, and myself, the Goalkeeper, amongst others.
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FIRST MATCH: TH v KE
We kicked off the proceeding at about 9 AM. The first match was against one of the toughest teams around, Temasek hall, braced with some lightning fast Varsity players. They were definitely the ones who you would not like to face first up. Our first line was made up of Jonk, Terence, Michael, Hafiz and Musa, plus I as goalkeeper. We had a very good start to the first half and we dominated the match but were bitterly unfortunate not to score. The first half also featured some good and very vital saves by our goalie. The half ended with the scoreboard reading 0-0.
The second half started off brightly too but the deadly Temasek team had the first laugh and scored two early goals in the second half to make the score 2-0. But having lost so many chances to score, we finally fought back with a superb tap into the goal by Jonk, followed by a last minute goal by the ever-present Terence, sending our team into frenzy.
Even though the match finished on a score of 2-2, we had the upper hand for the most part of the match and it was a real shame that we did not kill the match off. Nevertheless we had a very bright start to the day by securing such results.
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SECOND MATCH: EH v KE
This match was a real test of nerves and character. After a gap of about 2 hours we returned to be faced against a dominant and supremely technical Eusoff team, again braced with many IVP players unlike ours. The match was off to a very ominous start this time. The ball went out and our team was making line changes but the referee did not even bother to stop play. There were 5 Eusoff players against our one goalkeeper, who made a fine save but the rebound still slotted into the goal. Our valid claims fell on very dead and useless ears of the referees. The whole team’s morale suddenly fell down. From then onwards, we had a pretty uneventful match where we expected to be thumped out of the match by the Eusoff team. We let in three goals in the very first half, including a very unfair and unjust first goal.
In the second half of the match, we managed to pull one back thanks to the mighty Terence again. Yet, our team was very demoralised by what we felt were so many unjust refereeing decisions against us, coupled by a very physical Eusoff team. The latter managed to slot in two more goals at the end, one of them a very bad trivial miss by our demoralised goalkeeper. We finally went down 5-1 in the match.
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THIRD MATCH: KR v KE
We had a loss and a draw under the belt. Now was the time for a victory. We started off as well as it could have been, Terence again slotting a goal within the first 10 seconds. The Kent Ridge hall players frequently fouled our players and more prominently our goalkeeper. In my own personal opinion, there was again a perceived bias by the referees against our hall, which would be the norm of the day. These overlooked fouls cost us dearly as KR scored two more in the second half. One of the players from the other team even pulled the helmet off my head, but the referee remained blind to this foul. That was a very unjust judgement which put our whole team in a minor panic mode.
The game which could have so easily finished in our favour ended up a tainted 3-1 win for KR.
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FOURTH MATCH: RH v KE
This match was the one that we were expected to win, but a major problem surfaced at the very start of the match, when I, as the goalkeeper, suddenly had a very niggling problem in my knee. Thanks to the KEVIIan team spirit though, the whole team made life easy for me in the match. It was a great display of team effort when I was rarely put in the match. We dominated the proceeding from the word ‘Go’ and thumped Raffles Hall 5-0, with many of our players, including Terence, Hafiz, Siva to name a few, getting on the score sheet.
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FIFTH MATCH: SH v KE
We were set for a very probable fourth place finish when we came face to face with Sheares hall for the penultimate game of the day. It was a very good start to the match, with us leading 2-0 at the break thanks to our stalwart forwards Jonk and Michael. We had a very high morale going into the breather, but after the break we shot ourselves in the leg. With a national player in Sheares’s ranks, it was obvious that we would pay very highly for mistakes. And so it proved to be when the player in question took SH within a goal of us.
A second, third and fourth goal soon followed. Many of our team mates gained unwarranted suspensions; we shot ourselves in the leg. Finally Jonk proved his excellent skills by giving us one more goal making the score 4-3, a classy finish.
In the final moments of the game, emotions went boiling over a bit with a Sheares player intimidating Musa and kicking up a small skirmish.
We ended up losing 4-3. Tt just was not going to be our day.
It hurts to fall down from a credible third place finish in hockey last year to a disappointing fifth place finish for floorball this year.
But nevertheless, our boys who were given a tough task of learning and performing a new sport at such short notice, did very well. Still, the transition would have the better if we did not lose our cool and commit some very important mistakes, focusing instead on shutting out the games and making it out of reach for the other teams.
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To sum up the tale of Floorball this year, things have surely been lost in Transition.
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