~JcZw

Friendly handball match against Raffles Hall today. Somehow I ended up being the keeper who played the longest.

Puneeth started in goal as the Raffles players clashed with the proverbial Thin Red Line (of KE players). It took them about 7 seconds to breech the defence and the ball was past Puneeth and in the net.

I started about 10 minutes in the match. Barely 20 seconds after I was in the court I took a shot while I just barely deflected with my left arm. The ball screaming past the goal was a sight for sore forearms.

The RH players throw so hard that when I get hit in the arm I need to recover my balance. After that, I managed to get my hands on the ball at least 4 more times, but only could deflect the balls into the goal. They threw that hard. My trusty hypothenar eminences which stood me in such good stead when playing against KE handballers could not stand up to the RH players who would leap in super far and release the ball from about 4 meters range.

The only other incident of note (besides picking balls out of the net), was when a RH player shot the ball in, which I deflected with my leg, before he tumbled into my goal area carried by his momentum. His teammate, meanwhile, had collected the rebound and was jumping in for the shot and there he was LYING RIGHT ON THE EXACT PIECE OF GROUND WHICH I NEEDED TO STAND ON TO STOP THE SHOT! Not that I had a high chance since the range was point blank, but you get the idea. I jumped and threw out my appendages as far as they would go, but the ball went in anyway -_-"'

I should have stepped on the feller. Its not often keepers have a chance to injure people (ok just joking)

We lost, but apparently we didn't do too badly. Still, I've learnt that if the player is on the 6m radius of the goal area and has a clear shot, the keeper's had it.

Meanwhile, given the state of my body, I'm in no condition to go fencing tomorrow, but I guess I still will be. Don't expect much cos opposition is quite strong, but we'll see how it goes.