Year end tournament in Singapore

Report by Jurong Central Subbuteo Club

The year end WASPA tournament was held on 30th Dec 2015 at Jurong Central SC club house. It attracted 22 various SG club players, where organisors decided to split players into 2 categories; Open & Under 16 event.

OPEN Format
The 15 adult players were drawn into 5 groups, consisting of 3 players, with only the top players from each group automatically qualify for the quarter finals together with the best 3 second place players following suit.

With no ranking system in place, the group draw saw the top ranked Singapore players drawn into the same group, notably Group B, which had Nic, Rudy and Tan Kok Wee while Group E had John Ho, Bernard Lim and Noor Haikal. While the other groups consist of mixture of experience and lots of enthusiasm with two adult players, Khairil and Salihin, making their WASPA tournament debut plus our overseas guest Benny Ng from Australian club, Melbourne TFC.
Group A - Michael Choong, Simon Ee &  Khairil
Group B - Nic, Kok Wee & Rudy
Group C - Ezan, Rizal Tayib & Yew Seng
Group D - Irwan, Benny (Melbourne SC) & Salihin
Group E - Bernard Lim, John Ho & Noor Haikal

U16s
The 7 youth players were drawn into 2 groups; with the experience players placed in Group A while Group B had the enthusiastic four.
U16 Group A - Isaac Lim, Bolkiah & Luke Lim
U16 Group B - Ding Heng, Wei Xuan, Dylan & Ming Liang

The champions

Open Category
The open format saw several favourite casualties notably Bernard Lim, Noor Haikal & Nic, being eliminated from the group stage. There wasn't any fairytale ending for the two debutantes, as both were also knocked out early and demoted to the plates event which Nic Tan eventually won.

The top 8 Open category are as follows:-
Michael vs Irwan
Benny vs Rizal Tayib
Rudy vs Simon
John Ho vs Tan Kok Wee

U16s 
The junior event saw Isaac topping his group with a 100% winning record while Ding Heng had to battle hard before earning the pole position in his group to earn a final berth.
Isaac won comfortably 3-0 in the final against Ding Heng to lift the U16 crown, while Luke Lim beat Dylan to grab the 3rd spot.

Open Category
Michael Choong had to pull out of the quarter finals due to personal matters hence Irwan jumped to the next stage to met Benny, who had to sweat it out against Rizal Tayib before qualifying to the semis together with Rudy and John Ho who won their games comfortably.
Benny impressive run continued after another 1-0 win against Irwan while Rudy hammered John Ho to progress to the final.

Finals
Rudy and Benny first encounter was full of excitement in attack & defence. Waves of attack by Rudy was frequently foiled by the brilliants of Benny keeper. However, 8 minutes before the end, Rudy managed to penetrate his opponent central defence before slotting in the decider winner. 1-0 it stayed and Rudy was declared the winner of the last tournament of the year.
Congrats to all the winners and thank you to all the players who supported the event. Happy New Year in advance to all flickers world round and may we have more fun & excitement in 2016.

A special award for Benny Ng

Final Standings 

(Open Cup category)
1st - Rudy (Jurong CSC)
2nd - Benny (Melbourne TFC)
3rd - John Ho (Lions SC)
4th - Irwan (Jurong CSC)
Plates winner
Nic Tan (Jurong CSC)

(U16s category)
1st - Isaac Lim (Lions SC)
2nd - Ding Heng (Jurong CSC)
3rd - Luke Lim (Lions SC)
4th - Dylan (Jurong CSC)