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The Elusive 69 S Cup Run

Written by turkish_delight

Come around you boys and girls, let me tell you the story of a cyberspace viking, the indomitable jasonwerty, a.k.a 69 Cup Winner, a.k.a. Singapore Champion for HT Masters. He was also the most successful u20 manager SG had ever seen, bringing the tiny red dot to an unprecedented Round 3 appearance in modern times when even more eminent names had fallen short when in the hot-seat. When not whipping the U20 boys into shape, jasonwerty expends his superhuman brain cells on not just 1, but 4 separate teams with the flagship St. Xavier's sitting right at the top of the football pyramid - in the S-League.

This, is the story of jasonwerty and his cyberspace argonauts on their most memorable 69 Cup Run, OK, I made that last part up. But hey, i'm the imaginary wise elderly narrator so it stays, for now. a.k.a. for eternity. This, is the story of how ordinary cyberspace men became legends under the wireless mouse of one cyberspace viking - jasonwerty.

But jasonwerty wasn't born indomitable right from the first day in the job. I remember his first day 15 years ago. He was just a boy (relative to this imaginary wise elderly narrator), he bought an even younger boy Mikey Campbell, who's now retired. And then another boy Andrey Kotovenko, also retired. And several other boys who were fired. Doesn't matter, the point is, these chaps then are way past their shelf lives. But jasonwerty remained the only constant, leveling up over the decades that followed until he grew from a boy-bod, to a man-bod, and then to a god-bod. But even beneath that god-bod, was a boy-bod who still swears and breathes HT as much as his first day in the job.

So remember the boys I mentioned at the start of his career? jasonwerty had managed to recruit more boys over time and in fact, 4 of the men present during the final match of their Brilliant Journeys (BJ) were recruited between 17 and 18 years of age. More tender than the Tenderfresh chicken at Northpoint City they say.

Anyway, back to the 8 BJs.

First BJ - Thumping Tamago for brunch (696881680)
Easy warm-up game, the team was reportedly rewarded with sponsored lunch at Tamago-En after the match. 3 players scored a brace each that match as they demonstrated a 'non-stop pounding' playing style.

Second BJ - Gombak Goners (700968515)
The second Cup match saw them dispatch the home team with a resoundingly score-line despite losing possession just by a whisker. All the scorers had also scored in the first BJ, they showed that being clinical makes the difference between having equal ball possession.

Third BJ - Vulturii eaten by cyberspace Vikings (701148233)
jasonwerty and his cyberspace argonauts dominated from the first minute till the last, with a quickfire brace by Rahul Yadav between the 4th and 7th minutes setting a tone for the rest of the morning. It was a largely uninteresting match, besides the fact that it was the first round of matches being held at the neutral Archangel Arena.

Ahh, the sagely wise narrator would at this juncture point out that the Benevolent Patriotic Freak has decided to expand his own arena to one day take over the hosting rights for SG Cup matches. OK wise voice, enough sidetracking (17454422.191), back to this classic adventure of jasonwerty.

Fourth BJ - Kungfu wasn't invented in China, it was made from playing St Xaviers (701313579)
When Kungfu 11 manager wang11 pulled a mystical trick from the ancient Ming Sect scroll of qiankun danuoyi by substituting Stephen Wang in right at the 1st minute, it seemed like the cyberspace argonauts' journey would end there when Wang scored the equalizer near the end of normal time. wang11 was rumoured to have inspired the younger wang by disclosing he was his father, which spurred him to put on his best performance in the Cup.

Little did he know it would end in futility as jasonwerty's own substitute Sorin Domşa scored the 4th goal in ET to seal the game and bring the crew onwards.

Fifth BJ - Round of 16 - St Xaviers found wind in their Sail (701437947)
The Marina Sailors did not manage to find sufficient wind to knock out the by-then seemingly unstoppable cyberspace argonauts. jasonwerty managed to put out a titanic midfield along with triple supernatural defences, shutting out the Sailors while scoring 3. Sebastián Javier Amalfitani had been scoring almost every Cup fixture and he continued the pounding with another one this day.

Sixth BJ - Quarterfinals - St Xaviers sent MOE back to school (701539376)
It was as if the challenger had not read the memo, which resulted in jasonwerty's cyberspace argonauts handing out another 4-0 thumping to the educator of educators in Singapore.. moeinsingapore. OK, in all honesty, Moesizz had setup a strong defence relative to the incoming barrage of attacks expected. But like the saying goes, when it rains, it pours. Andi Braeckman scored a brace this match which MOE had no reply to. Back to lesson plans to prepare for season 70 then!

Seventh BJ - Semifinals - jasonwerty had the last laugh, at the last minute (701634219)
It was no laughing matter as Haha manager ownage6194 masterminded an extra-time go-ahead goal in the 105th minute through Philippe Heuze. But the plot was lost when the immediate change in team instructions meant to protect the lead instead saw them concede an equalizer to Nikhil Sethi who scored in the 110th minute.

In the penalty shootout that followed, Aw Tian Jin was the first and only one who missed as despite having scored 3 brilliant SE PKs by 'calm Technical players', his team was the one who went home in tears. Nikhil Sethi etched himself into the bad books of the Haha fans as the man who kicked them out with literally the last kick, completing the turnaround worthy of a semi-final.

Eighth BJ - Final - Crowned heroes after defeating Villains (701726154)
What a fairytale finish, where Good triumphs over Evil. Metaphorically speaking only, because the match was anything but. It was 2 balanced teams duking it out fairly and squarely. And then Villains' starting striker and team captain Bogdan Siczek was mysteriously injured and removed from the match in the 21st minute almost like a Salah of 2018. Now who's the Villain eh asks the elderly sagely wise narrator voice.

It took a good twenty more minutes before the cyberspace argonauts finally found a way to scoring through Bruno Sobrado. Despite Pierre Laurent pulling one back to make a tense finish for the final 12 minutes of normal time, Sorin Domşa's Final-winning goal was sufficient to bring the heavily envied Season 69 SG Cup trophy to the display cabinet within Hell's Pit.

A Timeless and Timely Tribute for the immortalized heroes
That 19.6m price tag? Fully justified. And remember the 4 Tenderfresh boys I started this classic adventure with earlier on? They were all Singaporean sons in man-bods by then. Such was the prowess of jasonwerty juggling both National Service and club success.

Take a bow, it's been a long ride Li Nie Jie (431041623), Broderick Chu (429030250), Levi Chin (430606116) and last but not least, the one who made himself a legend this season, Nikhil Sethi (433308527).

FINALLY, all hail jasonwerty, the CHAMPION who survived all 8 trials of BJs and obtained immortality at the end of the journey, their first SG Cup.

-Special feature piece by Freak's AFP