WHY OUR SCHOOL FOOTBALL TEAM LOST TO THE UNDERDOG.
It was never expected that our football team will lose the final match in the last inter-school football competition. In the state, our school was rated high by lovers of football because of our performances in the competition over the years. Our school had won the cup four times consecutively and this year our confidence was built on the fact that we were going to play with St Peter's High School, a team which had been rated low among the teams in the state. But at last, we lost the match and it is part of history in the state that our hitherto formidable team lost to the underdog.
The reasons why our team lost the match are not far fetched. Our team was over-confident. After the semi-final match which we won against Corona High School team which was also one of the highly rated teams in the state, our boys relaxed and all the attempts to gather them to practise could not materialise. The team's coach also shared the views of the players that the final match would be a walk over. Our boys regarded the semi-final match as the final match as they thought that the final match against St. Peter's High School team will not pose any problem.
Over-confidence of our team became our undoing as the opponent team rattled our defence and scored the first goal in the fifteenth minute of the first half of the match. The goal destabilised our boys as they struggled to find their feet. They could not score a goal throughout the match as they played out of form, each of them playing out his skill individually. This was our second undoing. Our boys lacked proper co-ordination of their various skills. They failed to play the game as a team and many of their passes were wrongly coordinated as they could not connect one another.
Another reason is that they easily gave up as there were bickerings and disagreement among our players. The mistake which the captain of the team made in his passes of the ball irritated many of the of the players and this affected the morale of the players. After the second goal against our team, our boys played lazily and could not find their feet throughout the game. At the end of the match we lost to the underdog team with five goals.
There are some lessons we have to learn from the match. Firstly, the need for adequate preparations before any match can not be over emphasized. We should not be over-confident to go to the field of play without making adequate preparations. Secondly, nobody can predict an outcome of a football match as it is not Mathematics. Thirdly. we should not under-rate any team as it is possible for a low rated team to spring up a surprise on the field of play.
Bilikisu Adeyinka
SS3C