A great Super 8 tournament in Singapore

The Super 8 tournament on May, 2012 managed to attract 10 of the best available Singapore players. The tournament did not start as planned, as one of the players, Rizal from Elias Subbuteo Club had to abruptly stop his game due to illness while playing the 1st match. Thank god! Our boys managed to get help and he was rushed to hospital. Rizal was eventually discharged from hospital a day after and now is recuperating at home.
Well, the game had to go on and the 10 players which were divided to 2 groups battled the day away. Group 1 tagged as group of "death" had several intense game. However in the end Kok Wee managed to crawl to the top of the group while John Ho and Christopher Soh secured the quarter final slots. Group 2 games were tight and only could to be settled in the last game where Rudy just managed to pip Henry to the top by a single point.
The barrages round saw Henry and John Ho progressed to the semi-finals while Joel and Haikal secured placing in the consolation finals.

The first semi saw Kok Wee, fresh from winning the Hong Kong WASPA open, beating his opponent by two goals. While the second semi saw Rudy claw back from a goal down to draw level with John in full time before winning in the shoot-outs.
The third placing was won by John Ho by a 3-0 score line while the consolation prize winner went to Haikal.

In the end, the stage was set for the final between Kok Wee and Rudy. Most predicted a low scoring game however both players did not follow their script and dished out an avalanched of goals making the finale to be the game of the day.
The first half saw Rudy racing into a two goal lead but the second half saw a rejuvenated Kok Wee suddenly scoring three goals. The game was set to be over as the clock was ticking down, however with 4 minutes left, Rudy digged deep and equalized bring the full time score to 3-3. The game was thus brought to extra time and again the finalist did not disappoint, as two more goals were scored ending the game 4-4 thus it had to be decided by shoot-outs. In the end, lady luck was smiling at Rudy, as he managed to win the shoot-out (2-1) in sudden time.

Rizal was awarded a point for participation of event even though he had to abandon play during the first game. He had a sudden heart seizure due to the excitement of game play but luckily nothing serious came out of it. The Singapore association is looking forward to organise more WASPA events and hope more players outside Singapore could join.

(Report made with the help of Rudy Hesty)