Thursday Night At Sports Planet: 2 April 2009
I popped down to Sports Planet last night to collect my jerseys from Gilbert, and to make a couple of video clips.
The sides were scheduled to line up as follows:
- Blacks: Gilbert, Shankar, John S, Joel, Jujing
- Reds: John J, Sushil, Rajseran, Prabhakaran, Neil
With Neil and Joel running late, they started 4 v 4, and Reds took an quick 2-0 lead. Neil and Joel joined the game a few minutes later, and in just over 5 minutes from the start, Reds were 5-0 up.
The teams agreed to swap players, with Jujing switching to Reds and Prahbakaran switching the other way.
Blacks were still in it at 10-5, before Reds pulled away towards the end to win 16-9. Both sides scored some very good goals.
A second clip can be viewed here.
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A perfect example on how the teams were lop sided.. Well it happens…. 1 of those days. The rankings will be revised this week right? So lets see if it makes a difference…
The option of swapping players has been available from very early on Yaseen.
It has been under-used. I’ll try to promote it.
Ya Jiv better promote it.. so was the game on wednesday a contested win for blacks??
No Yaseen, it goes down as a win in a non-regular session, as the winning side had a substitution.
Winning or losing don’t really bother me but I can understand that some players do get upset over uneven teams. No player rating system to accomodate this will ever be perfect unfortunately.
Perhaps we should try the time-tested-primary-school-playground formula of alternate picks by 2 team captains.
Better still, have appointed player-managers (highly ranked regulars) who can shape their team according to their strategy. It will be interesting to run a separate Manager’s League Table to see who does well over each quarter.
I can already see some our our highly motivated players gunning for the Hairdryer of the Season trophy!
It’s not necessarily a matter of winning or losing, but not enjoying a one-sided game.
I think everyone enjoyed the game more after the swap last night, as the game became more even.
Other methods of team selection are always available. We have tried having team captains, co-ordinators or selectors choosing their teams before the session. However, as there is an additional responsibility on the team selectors, and involves additional work for those participants, it wasn’t popular.
Many of those playing like the certainty of knowing which side they’ll be playing in before the session starts, so I’ll continue to put up the line ups based on the rankings.
However, it has always been open to those playing to completely re-do the line ups. The only consequence is that it becomes a non-regular session (with 1 point for participation and 1 point for a win) instead of a regular session (with 3 points for a win, 1 point for a draw and 0 points for a loss).
I thought the team was even last night before or after the swap just that the black lack communication wherelse the REDS played well with nice passes .
Prabhakaran did well too with his passes even though he did not had many chances to dribble pass through the reds cause we defended well . Jujing had a nice game and blended well with everyone .
We did better the last ten minutes where we started scoring more goals then and Black gave up by the time . Shankar had some injuries with his hand i think ( gotta stop your night activities for awhile ) and i think JOEL had the same problem too . As much as soccer is all abt your feet but having problems with your hands could slow you down .
Gilbert did well when playing keeper but could have shown him the red card when he did a two footed save when Rajseran tried scoring
Overall excellent game and winning was fun .
I initially suggested playing on with the same line ups because I thought the main issue was players getting used to each other. However, as Reds continued to score early on, Blacks might have lost their morale and the game would have become more one sided.
I think the swap was more psychological than anything, but then, sport is as much about the mind as the body.