My Adventure of Watching Malaysia Get Bashed

One day, a bunch of Form 3 students had the brainless idea of asking the Form 6s for a football match. "No worries", the Form 3s thought. "This should be a walk in the park". Well, ok. those buggers were twice their size but the Form 3s had numbers on their side.

14 of the Form 3s to 8 of the Form 6s if I remember the line-up correctly.

The reason of the sudden testerone-enlarged-testicle idea was that they thought the Form 6s, being in Form 6 and all, were your classic geeky bookworms. Furthermore, the Form 3s had been training in the best-paddy-field pitches in their local housing area and surau kickabout for years now.

The only problem is that the Form 6s didn't send their classic geeky bookworms. They instead sent in the ones who were not geeks. 2 of them were from some football project school. Suffice to say the Form 3s got stuffed. Stuffed like a VJ by a political youth wing member.

What the Form 6 had that the Form 3s didn't was the experience and brain matter to play. Although, technical skills are at best, on par, the Form 6s, passed the ball, played the flanks, found space with chips, flicks and nutmegs.

The Form 3s on the other hand were running all over like headless chickens.

Fast forward to the present, the severe buggering of our lads in the Asian Cup reminded me of that infamous incident in 1992. It's easy to point fingers and play the blame game but the fact of the matter is that the Malaysian players were not good enough. Just like the Form 3s back then, Akhmal and co. had gone up against better prepared, technically efficient, and tactically astute opponents.

So, before anyone goes overboard in criticising our nation's performance, spare the thought for me, who was playing in midfield, exasperately trying to pull that team of Form 3s together.

My job would have been much simpler if most of my teamates knew how to pass and not attempt to dribble half of the opposing team when their individual skills are somewhat suspected.