Thursday, March 11, 2010
Bok Bitten By Bum
Take emotion out of football and you have nothing but a soulless shell. Black type in the newspaper. To describe football as a roller coaster rider is old hat but last night in the space of a few minutes one coach experienced the full range.
Richard Bok looking on last night at Jalan Besar Stadium would have been delighted as the end of the first half approached. His SAFFC had been largely outplayed by the visiting Suwon Bluewings but approaching injury time his defence, with Shahril Jantan repeating his heroics from the play off against Muang Thong United, seemed to have kept the Koreans at bay.
Until there was an appeal for a penalty. Martinez, the Uruguayan flowing a lone furrow up top, was clattered by a defender, an arm connected with his throat, and he went down in the penalty area. It looked a sure fire penalty. To the commentators on TV, to both SAFFC fans in the stadium and to Mabel who serves the beer round the corner. It was a nailed on pen.
Except that little geezer with a whistle didn't think so.
The action immediately swept down the other end and an innocuous challenge 35 yards out was deemed a foul. Juninhio scored and within the time it takes Mabel to take the top off your beer a blank sheet at half time had moved on to the promise of a penalty then to the despair of losing.
People like to talk about turning points in a game. The penalty incident was a turning point. If it had been given and if it had been converted it would have been 1-0 SAFFC at half time. And if Mabel was 40 years younger and spoke English she would be working at Clarke Quay.
Refs like to be petty. It comes with the uniform. Two yellow cards for Ivan Lovric meant he had to take an early bath, not from Mabel, but both cards were petty. The second was for impersonating a character from the Addams Family while dressed inappropriately on a school day.
But beynd the ref there is another reason why SAFFC lost. They created next to nothing until, ironically, and how often does this happen, Lovric had gone.
Defensively they were good. Daniel Bennett turned in another good shift while I thought Razaleigh also done good. Further forward both Ahmad Latiff and Akiyoshi Taisuke showed what they could do. I can see flashes of Theo Walcott in the Japanese player. Plenty of pace but till now little end product.
Results is all and SAFFC will be upset by this. But there were things to be built on. Suwon are a good team and will cause many teams problems. For today Richard Bok will be examining the video to see what can be worked on before they play the slightly more down to earth Sengkang Punggol next week.
Richard Bok looking on last night at Jalan Besar Stadium would have been delighted as the end of the first half approached. His SAFFC had been largely outplayed by the visiting Suwon Bluewings but approaching injury time his defence, with Shahril Jantan repeating his heroics from the play off against Muang Thong United, seemed to have kept the Koreans at bay.
Until there was an appeal for a penalty. Martinez, the Uruguayan flowing a lone furrow up top, was clattered by a defender, an arm connected with his throat, and he went down in the penalty area. It looked a sure fire penalty. To the commentators on TV, to both SAFFC fans in the stadium and to Mabel who serves the beer round the corner. It was a nailed on pen.
Except that little geezer with a whistle didn't think so.
The action immediately swept down the other end and an innocuous challenge 35 yards out was deemed a foul. Juninhio scored and within the time it takes Mabel to take the top off your beer a blank sheet at half time had moved on to the promise of a penalty then to the despair of losing.
People like to talk about turning points in a game. The penalty incident was a turning point. If it had been given and if it had been converted it would have been 1-0 SAFFC at half time. And if Mabel was 40 years younger and spoke English she would be working at Clarke Quay.
Refs like to be petty. It comes with the uniform. Two yellow cards for Ivan Lovric meant he had to take an early bath, not from Mabel, but both cards were petty. The second was for impersonating a character from the Addams Family while dressed inappropriately on a school day.
But beynd the ref there is another reason why SAFFC lost. They created next to nothing until, ironically, and how often does this happen, Lovric had gone.
Defensively they were good. Daniel Bennett turned in another good shift while I thought Razaleigh also done good. Further forward both Ahmad Latiff and Akiyoshi Taisuke showed what they could do. I can see flashes of Theo Walcott in the Japanese player. Plenty of pace but till now little end product.
Results is all and SAFFC will be upset by this. But there were things to be built on. Suwon are a good team and will cause many teams problems. For today Richard Bok will be examining the video to see what can be worked on before they play the slightly more down to earth Sengkang Punggol next week.
# posted by Me @ 5:57 AM 
