Monday, April 30, 2012

Play off - 3rd win!

It was a sunny Sunday. The sun was shining, birds were singing, no one could have imagined that such a terrible game was about to start!

Akita against Sin Fou, match up for us, but against a team which cause us some trouble during the regular season. Needless to say we were absolutely ready to beat them down and send a message to HKU, which we will play for the championship title!

After climbing up to the sports centre, we get changed and after the usual trouble with the jerseys, we finally warmed up. At this time, we need to note the amazing block from Arnaud, who used his nose and left eye to block a shoot from Hervé. After painting the floor with his own blood and running to the washroom under our astonished look, we gathered and scream our famous German war scream!

We started the game in defense, ready to show them on their first attack that there’s no place for fun with us! Hopefully, we failed, and leave them the first goal on a 9 meters shoot. As usual, our beginning was just so so, playing on their rhythm and wasting too much attack because of our precipitation. The good point is that we are better individually and we scored quite luckily. That brought us to lead by 5 goals after 15 minutes.

The end of the first half was just a basic attack defense, each team replying to the other one with a goal or a miss. Definitely, our defense was not as focus as the game before, and their 3 feet tall back players scored too much goals that we can accept. On our side, attack slows down a bit and we make sure to score and don’t play their game. We reached the half time on the score of 13-9 for us. The scoring was quite even, with 6 goals from the wings, 5 goals from the back players and 2 from the line.

After changing sides, drinking a few sips of water and discussing strategy, we decided unanimously that we should kill the game in the first 10 minutes of the second half. Once again, we failed (we’re used to have some laborious starts) and after 10 minutes, we were still leading by 5 points. Finally, we woke up a bit and passed the 2nd gear to make a 4-1 in 4 minutes.

The opponents feeling they had to change their strategy if they want to stop our slow but unstoppable advance tried a very aggressive defense, one on one. Few seconds were enough for us to find the solution and we killed the game (later than our plan) by scoring a 7-2 and increasing our lead to 11 goals.
The last 5 minutes were quiet; our opponents lost their will of playing and we finally end up on the nice score of 30-18.

After a quick celebration, a team picture, it was time to have a dinner to farewell our German goalkeeper, Felix. We had to wait for the German to take a shower (French one is way faster, guess why), and then, wait for 5 taxis to bring us down to TST.

The dog house welcomed us (21 persons!!), and after a few brews and snacks, it was time to say goodbye.

So thanks to Felix for joining us this year, thanks for being our trendy goalkeeper, thanks for increasing the quota of German in the team, thanks for giving a new idea of what’s a German shower (a dark story of sausages I heard-ah ah so funny I am) and you know if you want to come back one day, you’ll be always welcome!

For those who stay in Hong Kong for the last game, we have 2 training this week, on Tuesday and Saturday.

We need to get down and work out for our final against HKU.

Stay tuned and see you all very soon!

May trainings!

Akitans,

Schedule of the coming trainings at the Wan Chai Park pitch:

- Tuesday 1st May: 1-3pm

- Saturday 5th May: 2-3pm


You can find the map of the pitch through this link.

See you there guys!

Monday, April 23, 2012

Play off - Second game!

Remember the first game of this season. We started with a lost, by 1 goal difference against a good team, HKIED. At that time, we were not really drilled, a few new players joined, Joakim was starting his new “grab-the-ball-on-a-9-meters-foul” technique… Many good excuses we repeat whenever we had to mention this game.

But then came the revenge, the 2nd play-off game between the 1st (us) and 3rd (them) team of the 2nd division. Needless to say we were fully motivated and ready to show them the first game was only a mistake.

With also a game scheduled in the early morning (11.30am) there was no hangover allowed! Hopefully, we played indoor, so we didn’t have to suffer of the heat!

We had the time for a good warm up but also a hard time choosing our jersey (White? Ok, but old or new ones? Old, we don’t have enough new! Yes, but the new ones make my eyes brighter! ...).

Then, it was the time. After the motivation speech from our leaders, team composition and our war scream, we entered the pitch and were ready to give our best.

The first 10 minutes were, especially for the substitution players, a real nightmare. Despite an amazing defense, which limited our opponent to score only 3 goals during this lapse of time, our accuracy in attack was close to 0. We didn’t make the count, but we can easily say that after 10 minutes, we could have lead by 7 or 8 goals if we had scored all of our shots. But no, the score was only 4-3 for us.

Finally, the next 10 minutes were more like a dream. The defense was still excellent, and whenever the opponent finally went through, Felix was here keep his goal clean. And we reached the half time on an impressive score of 11-5 for us.

But even with 6 goals ahead, it was not the time to lose our focus and let them make a comeback. With a few substitutions for the beginning of 2nd half, the intensity didn’t change at all, which is a really good sign for the 2 last games but also for next season in the 1st division.

Defense was still very good and our attack showed some nice combinations. After 17 minutes in the 2nd half, we were leading 20-10 and our opponents were disgusted. They stopped playing in attack, powerless to find a solution to score.

End of the game, 25-11. Akita clearly sent a message to his 2 last opponents: “We are ready and the 1st place is ours!”.

We’re now sure to go up to the 1st division, but we need to fight for the 1st place of the division! Let win our 2 last games and that would be alright!

Welcome also to Herve, another French guy who clearly helped us on this game!

Next games will be on 29th and 6th of May! Keep tuned for the good news!

The HK Giants Team

The HK Giants Team