Weuji

It was a Wednesday afternoon in 1992 and probably two months into the new school year. The group of us, about twenty lower sec. boys, had excitedly gathered at the foyer straight after our morning lessons for our biggest test of the year.

The motley crew of us, most of whom still sounded like sweet young girls were scheduled to play a friendly football match against the upper sec. boys that afternoon. Boys who were bigger, stronger and who could start from the furthest end of the field and still beat anyone of us to the ball. David vs Goliath's elder brother, if you would. The match was, I assumed, to boost the morale of the boys who had progressed to upper sec.

It was our first year in secondary level and within that short two months playing for Fairfield Methodist lower sec. football team, we already had a good idea of who's hot and who's not especially since most of us had graduated from the same primary school. In addition to the familiar faces, we had a few Malay boys who were from other primary schools. Typically like most Malays, these boys were good on the ball and so in some very optimistic way at the back of my young mind, I had entertained the thoughts of an upset with these new "signings" in the team.

I was pretty good with the ball in Primary school. I could dribble like Maradona and bend the ball better than Beckham. I felt I could do it all - with a plastic ball. It's a whole new story when I moved to Secondary One though. The ball was probably five times the size of my foot, moved five metres when I tried to bend it and I would leave the ball behind or trip over myself whenever I tried to dribble. I had great difficulty playing with a size 5 leather ball and I did not expect myself to make the starting eleven. And I didn't.

The manager/coach was this bespectacled Chinese teacher whose appearance makes you think he knows Mathematics formulas way better than football formations. He got us seated as he named his line-up and ended his prep talk along the lines of, "let's keep the score low". Great.

It was like 13-0 when my moment of glory came in the second half. I was going in as a right-sided midfielder in our ultra negative formation of 5-5-0. It took a while for me to get into the game and when I got my first touch of the ball five minutes after I had come on, there was only one thought on my mind - go for goal.

I dribbled the ball into the opponent half unchallenged, skipped past one tackle and had a upper sec. snob chase my shadow. Just as swiftly as I had bombed forward, I was adjudged to be unfairly hacked down as I neared the penalty box. I had earned my team our first freekick in the opponent half and I had led our first real attack. I had at last found my feet.