Proud

We took part in the Rotaract Club futsal competition on Saturday. We had expected the opposition to be tough and our fears were confirmed when we saw the other teams playing in the first phase of the group stage. Most of the other teams had good players who looked like they played for school teams. Naturally, we were overawed as we are a bunch of amateur players playing only for fun. We started worrying about how many trashings we will get. Our tactic was to soak and strike, a negative tactic designed to stifle our opponents. For our first match, we drew 0-0 but dominated the game. It was a great morale booster and made us believe that we could more than match our opponents. Our second opponents were supposedly the best team in the group but we lost only 1-0 and the goal was a lucky goal. We restricted them to a few chances and matched them stride for stride. We could have easily gotten a draw. Our third match ended in a 3-1 defeat. There was nothing much we could do about the result as the opponents were clearly better than us. We were left chasing shadows most of the time. Overall, even though results did not go our way, I was proud of our perfromances. Everyone did what they were supposed to do and nobody made any mistakes. I felt that everybody played above themselves and I couldn't ask for more from anyone. We defended well as a team and stuck together. There was plenty of encouragement for each other, both on and off the pitch. It was a great show of team spirit and a good experience. We showed that we are no longer the whipping boys. We will be back next year.