Morgan Stanley's 9th annual 5-a-side football tournament

Morgan Stanley's 9th annual 5-a-side football tournament kicked off under cloudy skies and chilly wind and.... the SAFE a.k.a. Settlements team went all the way to the semi-finals and ended THIRD !!

Yes!! a mighty fine display.

And doubly sweet considering the lack of substitute players. Without a doubt, the SAFE-five were the most outstanding underdogs in the tournament. We had the intensity of a kicked beehive. (kicked beehive--that's actually a John Smith phrase. He wrote it years ago. I steal it every time I write something.)

Our star player??James "Striker" Spicer a.k.a. James.... He was so outstanding in the tournament; that you could not work out what position he played in, due to his dominance and moments of sheer brilliance at every corner of the pitch. And I mean that literally.... he took the strikes, played the role of goalie, set up goals for the strikers, defended and got his just rewards. Smashed 8 goals!! Must be a front-runner for the golden-boot award, I reckon.

The strike trio of Andy(4 goals), Dave(3 goals) and Grant(4 goals) were very consistent and showed glimpses of class all the way through. I (a.k.a. AdyaMan) too joined the party and scored 3 of 'em goals!! Andy had 2 brilliant free kicks to his credit, that showed the excellent form he was in. Dave was in his brilliant best!! And some of the goalies stood there flabbergasted, as Grant's powerful free-kicks ended up in the net.

Under the kind of intense pressure were in, especially the constant nagging of the audience and the rough opposition(s), other people would have thrown the game. Well, perhaps "throw" is too strong a word, but I certainly pulled my punches. The main area where we felt we fell short -- on the Achilles’ heel -- was goalkeeping; the goalkeepers kept changing every half (and almost cost us the game when I was keeping ;-)).

We were up against Equity CSG in the first game (we lost badly, 6-2) .... then went on to hammer Quantum IT 7-2 and IBD APG (I guess) 4-1!! And surprise of surprises, we pitted against Equity CSG again in the Quarter-Finals .... they were grinning ear-to-ear when we stepped in the arena .... expecting an easy win .... but we ended up beating them 5-1, thanks to some excellent strikes by Andy and Grant!!

The semi-final was a tough one -- the EC Dev team had some real good players and truckloads of substitutes.... who kept pouring in, every alternate minute. At one point in time, I was racking my brains trying to figure out where that tall skinny guy disappeared.... and lo behold! I find him chuggin' towards me at full-throttle from the subs area. We lost the semis 3-2.

We then; after a few pints of lager; parted ways to have some good sound sleep at around midnight. I reckon we successfully "settled" this "mission" "safe"ly, using all the tricks of the "trade" and showed world how we can rise to a challenge, and do more than just frantically hacking away code!

Thanks to everybody for an incredibly fun evening.

The Universe is again nagging me back to work. I better get right on that.
3 cheers to the SAFE team!!

Godspeed,
AdyaMan