After a nice win on the first day of the league the Raiders were excited and full of confidence for their second match against the Young Business Associates. After a good training on Wednesday Collin had selected a squad of 16 eager lads. Some Raiders had difficulties to be on time or to be at the place were they had signed up to be. Mustafa was the first Raider on the spot and was already working some sweat an hour ahead.

After a decent warm up and discussing some tactics by Olly who was the coach for this match, the starting 11 were ready. Pete, Vincent, Jerry and Daniel Vo in the defense, a midfield with Mustafa, Mic, Andy and Nicolas, Nico and Pat as our target man. All Raiders found out that it was a bit hotter then expected but where all full of energy for kick off.

The game started slowly, but we could see we played a typical Vietnamese team. Vincent looked a bit uncomfortable playing next to Jerry in the center. Nicolas did a lot of running on the left wing, while Pat and Nico had their battles with the defenders. Pat somehow got booked for something that definitely was not a yellow card. While our opponents might have deserved a card for jumping Nico in his back our trying to cut Pat in half with a stretched leg. The YBA guys created some changes and came dangerously close to scoring but Mirko was always in the right spot, had a great reflex or did a Houdini and kept us in the game. A long ball from the YBA defender went over Daniel Vo and I think it was Mr. Nguyen who scored for them. We also have to give kudos for the referees who gave a yellow card for a dive and some nice acting to one of the YBA guys diving twice in the box. The Raiders only had one good chance in the first half, Pat launched Andy who didn’t have the luck and energy to shoot the ball behind their goalie. He was luckier at the October fest later that night by snatching up something from the lucky draw.

During half time Olly and Daniel gave a speech and we all had the feeling we could turn this around in the second half. Some tactics were discussed and we all agreed that we should try to shoot to test their goalie and get more out of our standard situations.

The second half started with good intentions but unfortunately the Raiders were never fully able to get in the game or to create some real scoring opportunities. The YBA kept moving forward but Mirko kept them from scoring with some brilliant reflexes. Which also gained him the man of the match award! Somewhere in the second half while being all free and with all the time in the world I managed somehow to stumble over and got to write the match report as by clearly a majority that was voted the Turkey of the match. In the last few minutes the YBA managed to score a second while we were all up front trying to breach their defense with all we got. It looked like an easy sweep for Mirko but somehow he lost the ball around the midline and they shot in in the goal from a good 40 meters.

The match was lost and it seemed we all had a collective off day and some of the old demons came back. We were unable to make the triangles, squares and keep the easy passes like we practiced in training. Maybe we were all disappointed Joe’s misses was not wearing her hot pants like with the Ashes or we were already with our head on the Oktoberfest but things just didn’t work out. Let’s get revenge next week and most likely some extra laps on Wednesday. Hope the guys who decided to collectively bail out to Phu Quoc had a great time.

Cheers Lads