3 pts. Roger - Consecutive 3 pts for Roger in another brilliant team performance, in attack and defence. Opened the floodgates with his brilliant opener in the first game, and led by example with 頭頂腳踢. The in form player.
2 pts. SS Andy - Under difficult circumstances but carried his team with 9 points, coming alive in the second half.
1 pt. Ricky - A flawless first half performance with goals and assists, but fatigue played a part in a less brillliant second half. Nonetheless his contribution to the team was significant and made the difference between the teams.
Belchers Committee
Monday, 22 February 2010
Friday, 19 February 2010
Belchers Indoor League - Best and Fairest (13 Feb)
3 pts: Roger. A flawless performance arguably in his more preferred Fabregas role, Roger was superb in making interceptions and dictating play from the back, allowing teammates to attack more freely, and in the process of reminding us that he is more than the Didier Roger we know. Brilliant.
2 pts: Varley. The half court volley was worth the trip to Belchers alone. And on either side of that were two ferocious and unstoppable long range efforts, making him one of the most feared strikers in Hong Kong at the moment.
1 pt: Big Jer. Entertaining link up play with zizu (who narrowly missed out on the points) and ending some of the moves with precise finishing, also excelled when asked to play in a more unfamiliar defensive position.
Belchers Committee
Wednesday, 10 February 2010
Belchers Indoor League - Best and Fairest (6 Feb CUP GAME)
We had our first game cup this season, the Belchers Role Playing Game with the following three teams to pick from:
Team Lifesavers (aka Baywatch)
Team Bond (James Bond)
and Team Victoria Park Grandpas (don't you just love those tight see through singlets?)
In the end, the teams were no match for the grandpas, who made up for their lack of speed with all their years of experience to win the first Cup of the season. The final results were:
Team Lifesavers: 2W6D2L, 12 points
Team Bond: 0W5D3L, 5 points
Team Victoria Park Grandpas: 4W, 3D, 1L, 15 points
Congrats to the grandpas!
And the B&F are:
3 pts: Eddy. It was a great team effort from the grandpas but it was Eddy with the crucial goals that sealed the cup victory for the team. Raw power and lethal accuracy is a tough combination to defend against.
2 pts: Master. Made countless brilliant saves to keep his team in the game. An error which gifted Leslie his goal was hard to forget, however.
1 pt: Andy. With Eddy in attack and Dezza (who narrowly missed out on the points) in defence, SS was the one who pulled it all together with a great captain's display in midfield, urging his team on and was for once extremely vocal on the court.
Belchers Committee
Team Lifesavers (aka Baywatch)
Team Bond (James Bond)
and Team Victoria Park Grandpas (don't you just love those tight see through singlets?)In the end, the teams were no match for the grandpas, who made up for their lack of speed with all their years of experience to win the first Cup of the season. The final results were:
Team Lifesavers: 2W6D2L, 12 points
Team Bond: 0W5D3L, 5 points
Team Victoria Park Grandpas: 4W, 3D, 1L, 15 points
Congrats to the grandpas!
And the B&F are:
3 pts: Eddy. It was a great team effort from the grandpas but it was Eddy with the crucial goals that sealed the cup victory for the team. Raw power and lethal accuracy is a tough combination to defend against.
2 pts: Master. Made countless brilliant saves to keep his team in the game. An error which gifted Leslie his goal was hard to forget, however.
1 pt: Andy. With Eddy in attack and Dezza (who narrowly missed out on the points) in defence, SS was the one who pulled it all together with a great captain's display in midfield, urging his team on and was for once extremely vocal on the court.
Belchers Committee
Friday, 5 February 2010
Match Review 28 Jan 2010 (Australia 0 - 3 Sierra Leone)
Match Review
Well done all to those who turned up yesterday (esp. Gordon and Andy, who were ill/recovering from illness and Shiuy, who was carrying a toe injury) - we mustered 7 player at the end and put up a real fight. The final score was 0-3 (we lost to Sierra Leone) but that is totally misleading. We started the match at 7:40, and it was still 0-0 at 8:40. It was unfortunate that we lost a late goal, and because we had to chase an equaliser, we lost another two quick goals. Our defence was rock solid, and we all worked very hard to track our men. Special mention to Chris and Patrick especially for tracking men very closely and never gave up. We made a lot of interceptions, espcially Chris in anticipating passes. We made it very difficult for them, and really they didn't have much goal opportunities in the first hour. We had a few very good chances throughout the match (esp. a couple late in the game when Neil made his typical dashes late in the game, I think Shiuy had at least one 1-on-1 and Andy had a good volley opportunity), but again we were not able to finish clinically. Gordon had a good game and made few (usual by his standard now) heroic 1-on-1 saves, but I thought it was his reading of the game (i.e. quick thinking to dash out of goal to cut/intercept plays) that made the impression. I felt had we got another sub - especially a player who can control the play and take the ball up and/or an in-form striker, we would have either drew the match or won the game - the team who scored first would have taken the game I think. It was that close and we felt this team was beatable. They are a good side, but certainly not at the same level as Spain/France/Peru. Let's aim to beat them in the final round.
The side note is that it is really great to see we really do have the fighting spirit and never gave up. We are improving in many areas - tracking-back, communication (calling for the ball/taking ownership of marking/calling man-on etc.), even attacking plays are improving though it is clear that this is the area we need to work on most. Final round starts next week and we are on level points with Nauru and Taiwan (equal 5th). We are well positioned to fight for 5th place (i.e. the crown in the "lower league").
Man of the match - Chris (a.k.a. makelele) for stepping up a gear on this game. Excellent work rate and truck loads of steals/interceptions.
Patrick deserves a special mention too for excellent work rate as well and also for coming to the match to rescue the rest of the squad. You made a huge difference. It is quite clear that Patrick is comfortable with the size of the pitch. Great all-round play.
Squad 1. Nick 2. Chris 3. Andy 4. Gordon 5. Shiuy 6. Neil 7. Patrick
What we did well?
1. Defensive play was exceptional. I don't recall they had any open goal opporunties as we marked them very tightly, and even if we were beaten one-on-one on dribble, we either tracked back to recover or had another player to cover. We anticipated many of their passes and intercepted. Very very few defensive errors (whether individually or as a team).
2. We created good chances. Especially later in the game when we made more through-passes and had the forwards holding the ball to wait for support (rather than go alone for a speculative shot).
What we could do better?
1. Finishing needs more practice.
2. Ball control (esp in air)/dribbling still need more work again. We lost most high balls - we either need a lot more practice/experience or perhaps we should making these passes. When we boot the ball up, we can try to keep the lower and towards the corners (or even hit against the wall).All comments/suggestions welcomed.
Well done all to those who turned up yesterday (esp. Gordon and Andy, who were ill/recovering from illness and Shiuy, who was carrying a toe injury) - we mustered 7 player at the end and put up a real fight. The final score was 0-3 (we lost to Sierra Leone) but that is totally misleading. We started the match at 7:40, and it was still 0-0 at 8:40. It was unfortunate that we lost a late goal, and because we had to chase an equaliser, we lost another two quick goals. Our defence was rock solid, and we all worked very hard to track our men. Special mention to Chris and Patrick especially for tracking men very closely and never gave up. We made a lot of interceptions, espcially Chris in anticipating passes. We made it very difficult for them, and really they didn't have much goal opportunities in the first hour. We had a few very good chances throughout the match (esp. a couple late in the game when Neil made his typical dashes late in the game, I think Shiuy had at least one 1-on-1 and Andy had a good volley opportunity), but again we were not able to finish clinically. Gordon had a good game and made few (usual by his standard now) heroic 1-on-1 saves, but I thought it was his reading of the game (i.e. quick thinking to dash out of goal to cut/intercept plays) that made the impression. I felt had we got another sub - especially a player who can control the play and take the ball up and/or an in-form striker, we would have either drew the match or won the game - the team who scored first would have taken the game I think. It was that close and we felt this team was beatable. They are a good side, but certainly not at the same level as Spain/France/Peru. Let's aim to beat them in the final round.
The side note is that it is really great to see we really do have the fighting spirit and never gave up. We are improving in many areas - tracking-back, communication (calling for the ball/taking ownership of marking/calling man-on etc.), even attacking plays are improving though it is clear that this is the area we need to work on most. Final round starts next week and we are on level points with Nauru and Taiwan (equal 5th). We are well positioned to fight for 5th place (i.e. the crown in the "lower league").
Man of the match - Chris (a.k.a. makelele) for stepping up a gear on this game. Excellent work rate and truck loads of steals/interceptions.
Patrick deserves a special mention too for excellent work rate as well and also for coming to the match to rescue the rest of the squad. You made a huge difference. It is quite clear that Patrick is comfortable with the size of the pitch. Great all-round play.
Squad 1. Nick 2. Chris 3. Andy 4. Gordon 5. Shiuy 6. Neil 7. Patrick
What we did well?
1. Defensive play was exceptional. I don't recall they had any open goal opporunties as we marked them very tightly, and even if we were beaten one-on-one on dribble, we either tracked back to recover or had another player to cover. We anticipated many of their passes and intercepted. Very very few defensive errors (whether individually or as a team).
2. We created good chances. Especially later in the game when we made more through-passes and had the forwards holding the ball to wait for support (rather than go alone for a speculative shot).
What we could do better?
1. Finishing needs more practice.
2. Ball control (esp in air)/dribbling still need more work again. We lost most high balls - we either need a lot more practice/experience or perhaps we should making these passes. When we boot the ball up, we can try to keep the lower and towards the corners (or even hit against the wall).All comments/suggestions welcomed.
Match Review 4 Feb 2010 (Australia 3 - 13 Peru)
Match Review
Well done all to those who turned up yesterday - as usual, it's very difficult to make it to a 7:30 game on a weekday. We only had 6 players against a better side (and who also had more subs than us). The scoreline looks pretty bad - we lost 13-3, but let's put this in context. We lost to Peru 10-0 in 1st round and 11-1 in 2nd round. So I guess 13-3 can probably be considered an improvement (not sure how we skipped 12-2!). Even Sierra Leone lost 13-1 to Peru in the last round, so arguably we did better than Sierra Leone! Not only that, of the 13 goals (we weren't sure whether it was 13 goals, but whatever), probably 10 or so of them were conceded in first half - i.e. the scoreline was about 10-0 or so in the 1st half. It was quite discouraging in the 1st half when we conceded a number of goals by our own errors - e.g. poor passing in the back, being overlapped etc. etc. They played their usual passing game and as expected was very efficient in their cutting in and team attack. They had a very good left footed player - very quick and has power shots (albeit very left foot dominated), but individually Peru probably doesn't have the individual flare/talents found in some players in Spain/France. We had a very rough/rocky 1st half and concded the first goal early, so there probably weren't much positives to comment on in relation to the 1st half.
At halftime, we decided to change our tactics (imput from our star tactician Rafa-Linus-Benitez).
- 1st observation was that in for most of 1st half we were 4 defenders against 5 attackers when we defended because their keeper played outfield as a fullback. We decided to match that with Gordon dribbling upfield (who incidently took a shot or two actually) and bouncing balls to and fro with the left/right backs. Their strikers didn't bother to chase these bounce passes so in most cases, we were able to slowly move the game in their half. I think we did lose maybe a goal because our passes were intercepted, but this tactic probably brought more advantages than disadvantages on balance. Because we spent a lot more time in their half and involved Gordon in the passing game, I think it helped Gordon to settle back into the game and made many excellent saves in the 2nd half.
- 2nd observation was that when we have the ball, people generally ran away from the ball which made it harder for make a pass (i.e. passes were mostly intercepted). Instead, we have more runners running towards the person with the ball, so we were able to make more short passes/return passes (as well as back passes to Gordon).
- 3rd observation was that we were losing the ball too easily upfield. To counter this, when we do have the ball, we had Chris, Andy, Dovan and Linus all holding/shielding the ball well when they win the ball and wait for the runners before making a pass. It probably also helped that because Peru team knew they were winning by a lot, they didn't really bother to chase the ball/run back so we had a lot of space upfield. Our (short/easy) passes were much more accurate than before.
Because of these, I think we played significantly better (certainly with a lot of more confidence) in 2nd half. The score was probably about even in second half. Amazingly, although we only had one sub, we ran hard both offensively and defensively - I think our work rate was probably higher than Peru (who was just lazy to track back at times to be honest). We created loads of chances - probably at least 1-2 good chance for each of us and it was our star striker, hat-trick hero, Dovan who scored 3 for us.
Man of the match - Dovan (a.k.a. Rooney) for clinical finishing and impressive work rate both offensively and defensively. Special mention to Linus for the game-turning tactical analysis as well as good midfield play.
Squad 1. Nick 2. Chris 3. Andy 4. Gordon 5. Linus 6. Dovan
What we did well?
1. Compared to the preceding weeks, our attack was more fluid and our passes were generally more accurate. Back passes were good in general.
2. We showed our progress - I think all of us are getting more used to the size of the pitch and our fitness level in general is improving.
3. Our ability to hold/shield the ball was better than before.
What we could do better?
1. Perhaps only Dovan excepted, all of us need to continue working on our finishing or even final pass.
2. We could be faster in tracking back - perhaps against Peru specifically - they were good at overlapping - i.e. playing a through-pass and have a quick runner running past our slower player. I think we will either have to work harder in running back or sit deeper in defence so that there's a "buffer".
3. We are still losing probably most/all high balls, and will need to remember playing the ball on the ground even if we are trying to do a longer pass.
Not really something we can just do better easily - we all struggled to get there on time this week and I think this is perhaps the main contributor to our shaky start/first half. Obviously it's beyond our control whether we can get there on time and certainly there's no absolutely blame on anyone, but I think it would help us settling in a lot quicker and make a material difference in our performance if we do manage to get there early.
All comments/suggestions welcomed.
Well done all to those who turned up yesterday - as usual, it's very difficult to make it to a 7:30 game on a weekday. We only had 6 players against a better side (and who also had more subs than us). The scoreline looks pretty bad - we lost 13-3, but let's put this in context. We lost to Peru 10-0 in 1st round and 11-1 in 2nd round. So I guess 13-3 can probably be considered an improvement (not sure how we skipped 12-2!). Even Sierra Leone lost 13-1 to Peru in the last round, so arguably we did better than Sierra Leone! Not only that, of the 13 goals (we weren't sure whether it was 13 goals, but whatever), probably 10 or so of them were conceded in first half - i.e. the scoreline was about 10-0 or so in the 1st half. It was quite discouraging in the 1st half when we conceded a number of goals by our own errors - e.g. poor passing in the back, being overlapped etc. etc. They played their usual passing game and as expected was very efficient in their cutting in and team attack. They had a very good left footed player - very quick and has power shots (albeit very left foot dominated), but individually Peru probably doesn't have the individual flare/talents found in some players in Spain/France. We had a very rough/rocky 1st half and concded the first goal early, so there probably weren't much positives to comment on in relation to the 1st half.
At halftime, we decided to change our tactics (imput from our star tactician Rafa-Linus-Benitez).
- 1st observation was that in for most of 1st half we were 4 defenders against 5 attackers when we defended because their keeper played outfield as a fullback. We decided to match that with Gordon dribbling upfield (who incidently took a shot or two actually) and bouncing balls to and fro with the left/right backs. Their strikers didn't bother to chase these bounce passes so in most cases, we were able to slowly move the game in their half. I think we did lose maybe a goal because our passes were intercepted, but this tactic probably brought more advantages than disadvantages on balance. Because we spent a lot more time in their half and involved Gordon in the passing game, I think it helped Gordon to settle back into the game and made many excellent saves in the 2nd half.
- 2nd observation was that when we have the ball, people generally ran away from the ball which made it harder for make a pass (i.e. passes were mostly intercepted). Instead, we have more runners running towards the person with the ball, so we were able to make more short passes/return passes (as well as back passes to Gordon).
- 3rd observation was that we were losing the ball too easily upfield. To counter this, when we do have the ball, we had Chris, Andy, Dovan and Linus all holding/shielding the ball well when they win the ball and wait for the runners before making a pass. It probably also helped that because Peru team knew they were winning by a lot, they didn't really bother to chase the ball/run back so we had a lot of space upfield. Our (short/easy) passes were much more accurate than before.
Because of these, I think we played significantly better (certainly with a lot of more confidence) in 2nd half. The score was probably about even in second half. Amazingly, although we only had one sub, we ran hard both offensively and defensively - I think our work rate was probably higher than Peru (who was just lazy to track back at times to be honest). We created loads of chances - probably at least 1-2 good chance for each of us and it was our star striker, hat-trick hero, Dovan who scored 3 for us.
Man of the match - Dovan (a.k.a. Rooney) for clinical finishing and impressive work rate both offensively and defensively. Special mention to Linus for the game-turning tactical analysis as well as good midfield play.
Squad 1. Nick 2. Chris 3. Andy 4. Gordon 5. Linus 6. Dovan
What we did well?
1. Compared to the preceding weeks, our attack was more fluid and our passes were generally more accurate. Back passes were good in general.
2. We showed our progress - I think all of us are getting more used to the size of the pitch and our fitness level in general is improving.
3. Our ability to hold/shield the ball was better than before.
What we could do better?
1. Perhaps only Dovan excepted, all of us need to continue working on our finishing or even final pass.
2. We could be faster in tracking back - perhaps against Peru specifically - they were good at overlapping - i.e. playing a through-pass and have a quick runner running past our slower player. I think we will either have to work harder in running back or sit deeper in defence so that there's a "buffer".
3. We are still losing probably most/all high balls, and will need to remember playing the ball on the ground even if we are trying to do a longer pass.
Not really something we can just do better easily - we all struggled to get there on time this week and I think this is perhaps the main contributor to our shaky start/first half. Obviously it's beyond our control whether we can get there on time and certainly there's no absolutely blame on anyone, but I think it would help us settling in a lot quicker and make a material difference in our performance if we do manage to get there early.
All comments/suggestions welcomed.
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