The AFC U-17 Championships

Yesterday after I had blogged about a myriad of stuff, I headed for the park. En route, I was blinded by the floodlights of the Bishan stadium which signalled that a soccer match was going on. As I walked past the gates, I noticed that tickets were on sale. I learned that it was going at 5 bucks a piece.

I remember how there was this stairways which would offer a vantage point of the stadium to watch the match. When I reached the stairwell, lo and behold, several other people had already beaten me to it.

There were soccerites in all white and in all red. The whites were the Chinese while the reds were the Vietnamese.The electronic digital flashing red scoreboard trumped up 2-0 in favour of the reds.

All I know was that I was watching the dying minutes of the game and the Chinese were on the offensive. In fact the whole action of the game was taking place at the other end of the goal post from where I was, near the Viets' goal mouth.

The Vietnamese had kicked in their two goals in the first few minutes of the game. The Chinese were fast and furious, dribbling and attacking while the Viets were defensively shoving and fending off. This earned them a send-off at one point in the match.

The Viets must be tired out and there were a quite a few injuries among their compatriots. There was no let-up on the part of the Chinese which showed their consistent stamina and prowess.

Before long, the game ended on a 3-3 draw.

All the while during the match, I had cheered when there were many fantastic moves to score a goal and cheered even louder when the attempts materialised. It was no mean feat that the Vietnamese goalkeeper had warded off many an attempt at its goal post. He should truly have been nominated as the saviour of the match which would otherwise have seen a very big gap between loser and winner.

I found myself opening up to the few spectators on the stairwell as we exchanged critique on the game, the moves and the players.

When the final whistle blew and the floodlights snuffed out, I realised that sports do gel people together in a certain sort of way.