Match Report Valley D vs. HKFC F

After yet another hiatus in our league, Damage was finally scheduled to play again on a Tuesday night against table topping Footy Club (F) who, in addition to sporting a number of ex-Valley B team players, were also stacked with a suspicious number of Hamburger’s - but no Cheeseburger- meh. Whatever.

Seeing that Damage was somewhat short on players (with JT and G (spot) both still living it large at Penny Bay courtesy of the SARG), Skipper Munzy made the decision to call for some additional firepower from Extreme and Mothers - a call which was duly heeded by Andreas (another Hamburger, yet still needs a nickname), Sprout, Andy (also needs a nickname), and Muff (Dive) - all of whom made critical contributions in the game. Damage boys, you know what to do if you ever see these fine gentlemen in a pub (although preferably before 10pm).

Building on our previous performance against Sirius A, Coach Kelsey’s brief was mainly focused on us: (1) keeping possession of the ball; (2) setting up the screens early; and (3) holding the midfield.

First Quarter
Damage started brightly with Mudge and Suhail making numerous incisive leads into Footy Club’s D and quickly generating a short corner in our favour. True to Damage’s style however, we decided to give Footy Club an opportunity to get warm and (purposely) did not convert our first PC.

Rather than repaying our act of generosity in kind, Footy Club responded by launching wave after wave of attack through their center-mid of which George, Gareth, and Vulture did extremely well to snuff out. Munzy and Guy also did their part in countering the numerous attempts from the Footy Club‘s German Wingers from doing a Poland on us.
Just as it would appear that the First Quarter would result in a stalemate, a momentary lapse of concentration from Damage resulted in Footy Club’s left wing intercepting our 16 before, carrying it into the D, and scoring from a lucky strike.
Damage was down 0 - 1 at Q1.

Second Quarter
The Second Quarter saw a number of back and forth between the 25s but did not really result in any substantial opportunities from both sides. The Second Quarter did see a “ZOMG Orz” (feel free to ask google if too old to understand) moment when Muff after doing exceptionally well in trapping a hard incisive pass from Guy and creaming a Footy Club defender, proceeded to do a double windmill (a.k.a. swing and miss) as we all watched the ball slowly roll out of play.
Damage was still down 0 - 1 at the end Q2.

Third Quarter
As soon as the Third Quarter started, Footy Club began overloading their left and right flank with speedy runs from their junior players. This resulted in a quick goal for Football Club around 5 minutes into Q3 after their youngest player (I am talking about 15+ years (?) between Coco and him) stole the ball off Coco and managed to dribble to the base of our D (cutting across a number of our defenders) before passing the ball back to another Footy Club player for an easy tap-in.

Once again Damage found itself chasing a game 0-2 down and, once again, this proved to be exactly the wakeup call we needed because for the rest of the Third Quarter we were finally playing much better Damage hockey.

Up front, Cedric, Mudge and Suhail were tirelessly hassling Footy Club’s defenders and chasing after every loose ball; in the middle, George, Wongy, and Coco were making important interceptions; and at the back, Flemmo (who was still sporting numerous injuries from his hiking misadventures), Guy, Vulture, Munzy, and Gareth were picking up any through balls that made it into our 25 as well as making robust (but completely lawful) challenges to the Footy Club strikers.

Andreas, Sprout, Muff, and Andy, also did Extreme and the Mothers proud by linking up seamlessly with Damages’ play and were committing and winning the majority of 50-50 challenges. Muff in particular almost managed to thread a 30+ yard sure goal to Mudge which was unfortunately intercepted at the last second by a club defender.

A special mention must also go to our Goalie Gee for pulling off 3-4 wonder saves in quick succession. Even the Footy Club bench could not help but openly express their admiration for hiss Belgian Prowess and might even wanna sign him up as a backup for his son Antoine.
At the end of Q3 Damage was 0-2 down but in much much better spirit.

Fourth Quarter
At this point, aside from the obvious injustice in terms of the score line, you may also be wondering why it would appear that Muff is on fire. This was eventually revealed to all of us right before the Fourth Quarter when Muff broke the news that this was going to be his last game against Football Club for Valley (shoey time?). Talk about an incentive to beat club!

This obviously did the trick as the Fourth Quarter saw Damage further upping our tempo and holding much greater possession than before.

We were dominating in the midfield and even on the odd occasion when we turned over the ball, we did well to run back to cover our defence.

Notable moments include when Guy steamed rolled a Footy Club German (payback for *you know that thing they did*?), Munzy (perfectly legitimately) chopping down some attacker’s stick, and Sprout, well, being Sprout.

In the final 5 minutes of the Final Quarter George managed to generate a PC for Damage which Mudge duly engineered a strong through pass for Suhail to deflect into Footy Club’s goal.

Damage was now 1-2 down!
Despite the momentum being clearly in our favour, Damage was however not able to score another goal before the final whistle and the match ended in yet another 1-2 loss although we can all hold our heads high for the fine display of classic Damage grit and tenacity.

- Key Takeaway –
Not much really. I thought we did really well especially defensively. We always ran back when beat, we did not lose our temper (I think we are now two games in a row without a booking - a somewhat rare feat for Damage), and we played with all our hearts until the final whistle.

If there was one thing to pick on I would say it was our switching play (or lack thereof). Sometimes we do get a bit tunnel visioned and miss massive opportunities to generate more space and better opportunities in our play if we had just taken the time to swing the ball around back (and maybe back again if need be).

That said, yesterday’s performance was yet against another solid one against the table topping team.

Training is on Thursday and a huge game coming up this Sunday.

Go Damage!

- written by Coco -

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