a slice of humble pie

“Wise men ne'er sit and wail their loss, but cheerily seek how to redress their harms.”

- Shakespeare


Devastated would still be an understatement. For those still not in the know, Skopet were handed their third defeat last saturday in Tiong Bahru. What was harder to accept was the manner of the loss. It was an 8-1 hammering by an opponent who dominated and outplayed us having led 2-0 at half-time.

Shocked? So were we. But make no mistakes.. even though the opponent were good, they are not that good to be free-scoring against us. The scoreline is flattering to them. You can say these are excuses if you like but in truth we kicked ourselves in the foot and made them look very good. Why do I say that? It was a match that we could not afford to field a makeshift defensive line and we did exactly that. Losing Rizman at halftime and Syaf's refusal to play only added to the lost cause.

Wheres the passion, guys? Commitment? Too many of our better players have been missing matches regularly. In order to improve as a team we need consistency. An irritating referee once commented that he sees different sets of players from our team every match. How many times did we need to rope in outside players for a game? too many. And more importantly how many times have our best 11 players played together as a team? None! Why is it so hard to spare 90mins of your time per week?

Back to the match report- while it is easy to point the finger at a mediocre back line, the whole team played badly. It was by far our worst performance ever. I for one, contributed little. Out of shape and out of form, i was disposessed easily and my shooting wayard. Even when covering at centreback towards the end, I could not help prevent a further two goals frm going in due to lack of pace.

Sometimes we need a hard knock to wake us up or keep us firmly in our place. The most important thing is to learn from our mistakes and not repeat them. I have done some reflecting and have decided to finally work on my overall and match fitness immediately. I suggest you guys do the same. Be it fitness, skill or simply attendance-wise, there is much room for improvement.

There are many lessons to be learned from this defeat. Firstly .. to take a leaf from Sun Tzu's ,-"Winning Strategists are certain of triumph before seeking a challenge. Losing Strategists are certain to challenge before seeking a triumph." -we will be sure to be more prepared for future games. The 1-1 draw prior to the last game could be attributed to absence of regular strikers while the numerous goals conceeded on saturday was heavily influenced by a lightwight defence. In future, no manpower = cancel game. You guys saw our oppenents had close to 20 players and irritatingly used many substitutions.

Many of you 'neutral observers' would say that its just one defeat no matter the scoreline and that we've won so many games not to be so downcast about it. Im sure the 11 players that experienced the shame and agony of that drubbing would beg to differ. Its not something easily forgettable. And to whoever is criticizing the team or attacking any players on the tagboard, was saturday a joke to you? Stop being immature because this is not the occasion. Yes you can look on the bright side and laugh it off as a fluke if u want, but not at the expense of creating discord/disharmony in the team.On a brighter note since we've hit rock bottom the only way now is up. I say lets get it out of our system and move on to the next game.

- Fadly