GOAL

Tim Lange

DEFENSE

Marcus Heerlein

Michel Hermann

Philipp Rode

Jens Taubken

MIDFIELD

Thomas Berner

Andre Koehlmann

Michael Klemm

Franz Lanthaler

STRIKERS

Volker Giebitz

Sascha Maric

SUBS

Sebastian Zilm

Florian Schmidt

Markus Dolenga

One of the sights on the island of Pulau Ubin is the "German Girl Shrine" which is curiously named after the daughter of a plantation manager The girl who had fallen to her death during World War 2 somehow became a Taoist deity whose help some Chinese believers seek for good health and ... you guessed it ... fortune. On Saturday the young lady wasn't the only German taking care of others' fortunes, the GAS football players contributed in their very own way via a distinctly unenthusiastic performance.

Yes, it was an excruciatingly hot day and, yes, the pitch was (like most Cosmo league pitches) in atrocious condition, but these factors can't serve as an excuse as both teams had to battle with them.

Ubin were in the game right away and scored after only 4 minutes arguably benefiting from a somewhat idiosyncratic interpretation of the offside rule. Three minutes later it could have been 0-2 but an Ubin header missed the German goal only by a few inches. Clearly, the Germans were not in the game during these opening minutes.

The equalizer thus came against the run of play. After 10 minutes a wide throw-in from the right was flicked-on by Sascha for Tommy to nod in. Football can indeed be an amazingly simple game. Soon thereafter Sascha could have scored the lead for the Germans but he produced an agonizingly close miss.

For some reasons complacency once again kicked into the German game but it took until the 28th minute that GAS were penalized for sloppy marking and defending. An Ubin midfielder dribbled around no less than four German defenders to beat Tim for a second time. Yet, destiny provided two huge opportunities to equalize immediately: in the 30th minute Micha muscled himself through on the left only to forget to cross to Volker who was completely unmarked five meters to his right. Micha's shot was blocked. One minute later Sascha smartly stole the ball from the Ubin goalkeeper but somehow missed the empty goal.

While GAS continued to exercise pressure another sloppy pass in midfield provided Ubin with a counter-attack which was converted textbook-style after 41 minutes. 1-3 it was at half-time.

Rightly so, the manager demanded a substantially more spirited performance with better marking and more accurate passing in the second half. His requests went unheeded, though. The first 15 minutes of the second half saw probably the dullest performance produced by a German team during the current campaign. A 58-minute freekick from Micha could have made a difference but the Ubin goalie produced a superb save. The German team subsequently tried to increase pressure, also with the help of a bunch of fresh legs, but Pulau Ubin did the necessary to keep any GAS build-up at bay. Ubin could have even scored one more hadn't Markus D. cleared a ball for the beaten goalie after 80 minutes.

All-in a well deserved loss which prevented the GAS side from establishing itself in the top tier of the league. Being amongst the best requires consistency, a virtue the GAS side of 2009 doesn't (yet) have.

Our thanks go to Ubin for a fair game and, of course, to our goalie Tim Lange who did superbly well during his stay with us. Unfortunately the team was unable to provide the support for the most appropriate departure gift, a clean-sheet.

Florian Schmidt