October 5, 2013

Hi Guys,

Despite some rain and mud today, it was overall a good day for Compass which I believe went through at the top of its group with 3 wins and a clean sheet.

In our first match vs. Carnegies, it only took three minutes for Mat to get his first Compass goal, capitalizing on a cross by Ben that bobbled out of the opposing keeper's hands. At the 10-minute mark, Arnaud put in another cross that Cesar slammed into the net. At the 25-minute mark, Arnaud himself put in a very nice goal to see Compass wrap up a 3-0 victory.

The second game was against a much more nimble and skilled Taipei Da-An side, which spent some scary periods of time pressing hard on our goal, including 3-4 corner kicks in a row. Fortunately, Arnaud put us up seven minutes in with a sublime outside chip into their net and we held on for a 1-0 win. In this match and the third one, we were joined by Dan Long, who provided good assistance on defense. Dan also brought Wei-An, an excellent young player who is currently a member of Singapore's National U20 team. (*Dan was Wei-An's coach a couple years ago.)

After a one-game break, we played our last match against the Hong Kong Wanchai team, which also played hard and put some strong pressure on us. In one heart-stopping moment towards the end, they launched a hard shot that richocheted off our crossbar and directly down, but not into our net. With a goal scored by Cesar three minutes in, we once again held off a physically-aggressive Hong Kong team (which earned themselves at least two yellow cards) to win 1-0.

Besides Dan and Wei-An, were also received excellent assistance from French player Pierre (friend of David) who did great on defense. I also want to especially thank Steve, who played in the net all three matches and ensured we kept a clean sheet. I think we now have one more stand-by keeper option if Gary, Javi and Eric ever cannot make it.

TIME TO WIN THIS ONE, COMPASS!
Doug