March 18, 2012

Playing with a stripped-down team, Compass did well to pull off a comfortable 4-1 win over Taibei FC. A young, fairly-fit Korean side turned up to play against a 13-man Compass side in our warmest, muggiest match of the year so far. Not having done much warming up before the game, we took a while to get into our rhythm but then settled down, particularly after the 19th minute when Ben used a little head side-flick to put the ball over the keeper and into the net. Cesar doubled the score on the 33rd minute on a short back-pass assist by Gaetan.

March 11, 2012

It wasn't the final result that we hoped for, but Compass did leave Kaohsiung as Plate Champions (represented in the form a midget-sized trophy) after a week of good football that saw us dominate what is undoubtedly the toughest tournament group we've ever encountered--as David called it, a virtual "Champions League" of teams.

Compass comfortably topped this large grouping of teams at the end of 6 undefeated Saturday-Sunday group-stage matches, as follows:
1-0 win over Tubbies
1-0 win over Tainan Phoenix
1-1 tie with Kaohsiung Massive
0-0 tie with Taipei Black Star

March 4, 2012

Today's match against the Chung Hsing University "A" team (which included our sometimes-teammate Jose) started as a relatively challenging match but eventually ended as a 6-1 thumping.

February 12, 2012

My Fellow Teammates,

Congratulations on a strong, dynamic and hard-fought start to the Central League, with a 2-1 win over the Tubbies. Our cross-town rivals pushed us very hard up to the end but Compass held tough in what I thought was one of our best displays in a long time.

February 5, 2012

A job well-done to Compass on managing to dominate Jhubei F.C. today 5-0, despite the warmer-than-usual temperatures, barely any subs, hard uneven pitch and somewhat subpar officiating (with no linesmen).

January 19, 2012

Perhaps as a bit of inspiration, I went through our trophies and compiled the attached list of Compass F.C. honors for your reading pleasure. As you'll see, we have 7 Taiwan international league cup championships to our credit, plus another Taiwanese tourney championship. There are also 7 cup second-place finishes, meaning that Compass has been to the cup final 14 times, which is impressive in itself. We also have 3 plate championships.

Happy Year of the Dragon! Go Compass!

Doug

TAICHUNG COMPASS UNITED F.C. HONORS

December 18, 2011

Sunday saw a great end to Compass' 2011 year with a 3-1 victory over a very good Huiwen 'A' Team that, according to Eric, is currently the number-one high school side in the nation and includes a few Taiwan U18 National Team members. This was a team that had beaten Compass before, but not this time.

November 27, 2011

I think we were all surprised by the magnitude of our Sunday victory over Chunghsing University, given the very tough fight our last game 2 weeks ago with them was. According to Artem (who played with CHU), they were missing their keeper and some of their good Thai players. Ben and 1-2 others also commented they looked a bit tired. Nevertheless, they certainly played hard most of the match and even threatened our goal several times, particularly on corner kicks.

According to my records, the chronology of the first half went something like this:

November 20, 2011

In what was a very nail-biting match, Compass pulled off a 2-1 win over the Kaohsiung Pacers and laid to rest arguments about who the better team is. We also appear to have nailed the lid on their last hopes for finishing on top of the Southern League, as they played their last games of the season on Sunday, including a following 1-1 tie with the Tubbies.

This keeps Compass on top of the league standings with 14 points, four points in front of second-place Tainan Phoenix, with whom we have one remaining match together with Kaohsiung Massive.

November 14, 2011

It was a hard-fought battle today against Chunghsing University, which turned out to be a radically different, and much better, team than last time. Although we were well aware of that in theory, it wasn't until they scored 5 minutes into the game that we started to wake up to that reality. At the 21-minute mark, Ben scored off of a nice set-up by Daniel and Cesar, putting us back in the running.