Professor X, please return us our mental strength.

I’m peeved. It’s been 3 days and I’m still peeved.

Having gone through the match against Galacticos this past Saturday has been an invaluable lesson for me, us, and them too apparently (go look at their match report). We now have the privilege of hindsight to rationally reflect on our actions. I’ve analyzed and will provide suggestions wherever appropriate.

For starters, let’s be crystal clear to avoid any miscommunication. This is like the assumption portion at the beginning of your essays (I just finished my exams so don’t fault me for it). Oh yea, freedom. Anyways…

1) I speak more from my head than heart. It’s not meant to be that obviously biased to anyone/team in anyway. The content is an assimilation of what was said by all, and I churn them in the way that I perceive them. Inaccuracies might be due to my lousy perception or the lousy way you said them at the post-match briefing (most probably the latter).

2) When I refer to ‘we’, I am included in that ‘we’ in every single way. So as much as you take what I’m going to say personally, take it from the team’s perspective as well, for that is where I am coming from. After all, it is for the benefit of the team.

3) Result here means more than just the actual results. More importantly, it is our behavior in that match.

4) Sorry Capt, I won’t attempt to make any reference to the Manu-Spurs game and agree that they are the champions because of that match. Coz if you think about it, we are Spurs in this game. The referee’s poor decision brought a halt to our momentum, and gave the advantage to them. So saying they’re the champions based on that result would be agreeing to what the out-of-proportion White Man (toldja I’m still angry) claims of their team being the champions. We’re now in Jermaine Jenas’s position. Though innocent and cruelly treated, we are at the mercy of the FA, having to wait for our penalty, if any.

Ok let’s begin. What happened to us? From head to boots. From young winger to veteran supporter. From our goalpost to their goalpost. From 0 to 60 minutes (1st half). From 61 to 93.2564 minutes (unfinished 2nd half). What happened?

The positives first. It is undeniable that our teamwork is there. No clearer evidence than the way we defended and supported each other every step of the way. Based on the results, it might not bear us any favorable returns, but I must say the impact will be greatly felt off the pitch. Even better, on-pitch evidence could be seen in our first 2 goals. Brilliant link-up play all over. It had an eerie resemblance of how we tore down Dynamo in the past. Well done, to everyone for that.

Punctuality has also been on a favorable trend. That was shown in our first warm-up-session-together since that Dynamo match. Yea, that long ago. So once again, kudos to us for playing our part in ensuring that spirit continues. Another aspect we could draw something encouraging would also be the fact that we have a complete team. Off-pitch, we have a fan now, and a capable team manager (or assistant). Both had a large part to play in the last game. The former was having his “Referee Kayu” chants as frequent as he was dazed by his son’s silky skills, while the latter gave us a good-dressing down to wake ourselves up during the pre, break, and post match briefings. On the pitch, we are also starting to see people rising to the plate to take responsibility. For instance, Faizul is taking charge of the defence which has been left void by Herri (out injured). If everyone carries on with their roles like this, we’ll go a long way.

Now, the negatives. It is almost unanimous that the downfall was undeniably ourselves. No one else was to be blamed. What made it worse was we had such a showing in front of our first fan. As much as he was siding with us, do you think we left a good impression of our team on him? How is he supposed to attract others to come along and provide such support?

Indirectly, Professor X has robbed us all of our mental strength. Directly, we are mentally weak. Since that is too general, I’ll channel it down into 3 simple scenarios. The first was when we let 2 people beyond the 22 on the pitch to influence the outcome. Let’s call them the Green Man and White Man.

The Green Man had a history with our team. Never had a game under his charge gone as smoothly as we wanted. Thus we should have known better. I’ll be the first to admit that I realized that even before kickoff, but I was also the first to lose my cool. That affected my game, and soon enough, it affected our game. From then on, we let the Green Man take charge of the situation. Soccer is eleven on eleven, but how did the Green Man have the biggest influence? My take on this is that we are too bothered by the ‘ref’ that we lost direction in playing our game. The word ‘ref’ is unanimous to us, and it becomes a habit that we say it without much thought. For this, I would suggest that we curb this urge to frequently “communicate” with the referee. We can start by not calling out ‘ref’ at every decision. Like it or not, we should just play by his whistle. It is a fine line between being quiet and letting the referee trample all over us. The most important thing though is that we don’t let him have a reason to side the other team, the way we did in the last game. For now, let’s control ourselves, and we might just see positive results in the future.

The next man I wish to touch on (punch would be more appropriate at this juncture) would be White Man. He was shouting his “ma-man-lais” the entire game, and towards the end, spouting nonsense at the touchline. But those were really powerful words. After all, it brought about strong reactions from amongst us. He was being childish, and we seemed to be “childish-er”. And then the game was called off. What we should have done was to channel that anger he created amongst us into energy to recover from the setback and make them fall flat on their faces. Results, not random words, matter in football.

The second was our fitness. By halftime, we’ve made no less than 5 substitutions. And the 11 that were inside were like Stingrays desperately gasping for air. That certainly had a large bearing on how we handled the match. It could have even aggravated our frustrations, leading to our uncalled for actions towards the end of the game. In this aspect, it boils down to the number of players that we have. A very thin squad won’t do much good. Should we expand at the expense of the family brand we are promoting?

The third was handling the setback of conceding a goal. It is natural to concede, but the way we conceded is really awful. It might be due to players being played out of position, or due to the waning fitness levels of many. On this note, we need to improve our own fitness, especially in situations where we can’t rely on the availability of that many substitutes. As for conceding a goal, always try to keep your head up. We did that against Knights, which made us continue fighting even for a lost cause. That showed our unwilling desire to give up even in the worst of conditions. On the contrary, celebrate your lungs out when we score. We showed that when we scored the second goal. Take your time to immerse in the moment. How do you think the opponents will feel if we do that? That is an advantage by itself and we should capitalize on it.

Beyond the scope of the match, our discipline also needs to be improved. Sammy Lee gave us a good shelling at the end of the match, and I cant say it was undeserving. We definitely stepped out of the line, and the views given at the end certainly showed the rational humans we all are. But how about being disciplined individuals? What about turning up early (there’s still room for improvement for some)? How about warming up together (everyone) before every game? How about listening to the pre-game briefing by Sam Lee (and not taking shots at goal)? This list could go on and on.

So reflect on this my fellow brothers. Whenever you have some time to spare….
Whether you are waiting for your teammates to arrive;
Or you are waiting for your food in the canteen;
Or waiting for the traffic light to turn green;
Or doing you-know-what in the toilet;
Please reflect.

And with that, a new TeamCuzz will be born. A TeamCuzz with a cleaner image with the ultimate aim of bonding and having a good time in the sport we all love. And that TeamCuzz will show up at Regent Secondary at 2.15pm this Saturday and triumph over Galacticos.