betcha all have had those times where you rewind in your mind and see yourself doing the same thing…a little differently, a little more perfectly and without the one screwup that makes you the clown of the lot. of recently, i seem to have made a regularity of mucking things up. take the football match just yesterday. out on the right wing…my job was to feed in the balls from the side for our strikers. i’d do that if the ball would remain on my feet long enough…or if i weren’t too busy trying to keep myself from having my feet sweeping out under me. rain the day before had made the field particularly muddy and slippery and left me unable to run…at all. the match had started quite well…both teams fighting pitched battles for possession in the midfield…but the other teams organised defense made things hard for us, very hard indeed. halfway through the first half, one of our defenders made the mistake of passing, with his feet, back to our goalie who picked up the ball with his hands aaaaand…there went the whistle. passes to goalies are a no-no and a penalty was duly awarded. the kicker lines up and scores quickly. =.= things are not looking too healthy there with the second half having ended at 1-0 against us. our attack was too scattered…the defense too shaky. but we got back on with the aim to score 2 and let none in. attacks were snuffed out one after another…while they repeatedly tested our defense with quick passing and darting runs in our half. then comes our breakthrough. an infraction by them in their D-box gets us a penalty…which is coolly converted by the kicker. 1-1….still 1-1…last 10 minutes…a break, the ball at my feet…i run (more like slip and slide) with the ball towards their goal…and the shot by a forward ends up going over the bar. a little while later the final whistle falls and the teams go to penalties. they go first and score. we go and miss…1-0 to them. they score the second one too…and their goalie saves our second…2-0…the team begins to freak out…third one…our goalie saves and we convert one…2-1…still biting teeth…our goalie saves AGAIN and we score to take it to 2 all. 4th attempt…they score…we miss…3-2…5th attempt…and their attempt goes sailing over while our kicker slides it in…3-3 and we go to sudden death (good name…any one of the teams could drop dead anytime =P). they go first…and our goalie SAVES IT!!! then they call…me. “it’s easy…no problem…just slide it in smoothly to your left…” yep…very easy. the ref looks at both of us…be a hero or be a…the whistle blows and i step up to take the shot…and my left foot slides ever so slightly inwards and i scuff the ball. i also scuff my shot at all the glory that would have come had i made the ball go to the back of the net…what do i say? the next penalty shot…they scored and saved our shot. what? it felt…awful. the jibes the rest of the evening were not nice either. the other team wanted to kiss me…my team wanted to kill me.

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the end

(no…i dont feel any better now)