OVA vs ABN Bank

Started the day off at 9am, when Beg Mal woke me up to play football with him and his friends @Duxton. It was a very hot day, but since I had nothing on for the rest of the day, I ran around like mad. Or so I thought.

While enjoying a plate of maggie goreng ("Man! Maggie goreng telor ceplok satu!") at around 1300hrs, I received a call from Zulhairi asking if I was playing in the OVA game later on. OVA GAME LATER ON. YE GADS! I've forgotten I had a full match about 2 hours later! I groaned, now regretting that I ran around like a headless chicken so much.

So I got home, and planned to recover the best I could. Meal within one hour of physical activity, check. Hydration, drink plenty of water, check. A hot shower of 2-3 mins followed by a cold one of similar duration, followed by a hot one again, and cold, and hot, and cold, to expand and contract the arteries and get the blood flowing around the body thus delivering better oxygen flow, check.

Our opponents were ABN Bank. Was told by Abang Zan I was gonna start the game... and from centre midfield. YE GADS. Centre-mid EH. Defensive Mid at that. An attacking midfielder, a winger, asked to play defensive midfield. I felt like a fish out of water, while Zulhairi started from my normal position on the left-wing. Usually he's the one in centre-mid while I'll be on either flank. After 5 mins, Abg Zan could see I was not getting much joy, so he put me out on my more accustomed right-wing role, and Zulhairi to parner me in the right-centre midfield slot. NOW we're talking.

I had a good game by all accounts, and my partnership with Zul was sweet. Slick one-twos, through-balls, you name it. But the weather was blistering hot. I bent over several times, gasping for breath, quite drained by the heat and relentless running up and down the flank. Not to mention the fact that I had spent 3 hours playing in the morning, and to say that by the end of the game I was quite exhausted was an understatement... and a half. And my Puma V5.08's weren't helping either. I decided not to wear my red Nike Mercurials for once, to try on my Pumas. However, before long I realized that the Puma's particular bladed studs design weren't doing a good job of distributing my body impact very well on the hard artificial pitch, so my legs got a bit of cramp as the match went on. We drew 1-1, courtesy of an Adam equaliser. No disrespect to ABN, but we really should have won the game. They were there for the taking, and scored from the 1st and only attack on our goal, which had an element of luck as the ball hit the bar, landed on the ground, and spinned over the defender guarding the post from a corner-kick.

I particularly enjoyed this game because the 1st XI featured quite a no. of Clan members, people I've been playing with for several years, therefore the understanding and chemistry was there. People like Aizad, Yusry, Zul and me, with only Khairul and Adam coming in the 2nd half.

1st-team photo OVA vs ABN Bank