Mofok & Co. bring home Silverware

PHUKET

November 25 & 26, 2006

The Viking players arrived in Phuket around 10.30 p.m. on Friday night and as the serious sportsmen we are, we decided to have a quite one and just went out for some food before hitting the sack. Our first game the
following morning was already at 09.21 so we wanted to have a good night sleep. CEO was going take the bus Saturday morning from Krabi and join us later on, but after realizing he would miss all of our games he had to drag himself out of bed at 06.00 and take a taxi to make it to kickoff of our first game. Teams in our group were Royal Bangkok Sports Club (replacing Taichung Compass, Taiwan), LVK Movers (French) and Bayon Wanderers (Cambodia). We were only able to put out a team of 7 players after Richard failed a late match-day fitness test, so we had to play the whole tournament without substitutes.
The 7-great were CEO, Mofok, Stein, Matt, Breitner, Ola and Chris.

PICTURE: VIKINGS RECRUITED TWO EXTRA PLAYERS, AND TRIED TO MAKE THEM LOOK AS SCANDINAVIAN AS POSSIBLE

Despite being short on subs, we played a good defensive first game and got away with a 0-0 draw against RBSC, with CEO, Stein and Matt in defense and Breitner in goals as our biggest heros. Our second game was against one of the tournament favorites, the French (they eventually got knocked out on golden goal in the semis). We played a really good game with Chris and Breitner having some good combinations ending up in a goal and an assist each, with Breitner getting us the equalizer in the last second with a great strike, 2-2. That meant we had everything in our own hands coming in to the
last games against the Cambodians. They looked the worst team in the group, but maybe the lack of food, drinks and substitutes took its toll and we went down 1-0, in a poor performance. That was enough to be out of the race for the Cup and we had to settle for the Bowl, to be decided on Sunday, instead.

Well now over to some more important things! Since we played our last game already at 11.30 a.m. on Saturday, The Swedish Baby Gang (including Mofok and CEO) and Stein headed down to the beach for a great day with sun, swimming and drinking. Apparently the task of the day was to get Mofok as drunk as possible and we were wondering if he would last the night since the first drink was consumed already at 2 p.m. He showed some great stamina though and after a nice evening with food and drinks at Chili (Thanks CEO and Mofok!) we all headed to Patong for some late night activities...

It was a sorry looking bunch of Scandinavians (and American) meeting up at the hotel on Sunday afternoon. The night had been rough on our players
but probably worst on our coach Richard, who didn’t make it out of bed to guide us through the Sunday games. Despite that, we fulfilled our promise of
silverware to Keld by reaching the final of the Bowl after a 4-0 trashing of British One Night Stand in the semis, with Chris picking up a hat trick and Ola adding a fourth. The game would be remembered for something
completely different though as our striker Johan Mofok, clean through with the goalie, for some reason tried to put the ball in the back of the net with the outside of his foot. Things didn’t turn out the way he thought though
and the ball ended up at the goalies feet and probably wouldn’t even have made it over the goal line. CEO branded it the poorest finish of the century (or was it ever?). The final turned out to be a hard fought contest, but eventually we were beaten 1-0 by the Lions FC from Singapore. Ending runners-up not only meant we could bring silverware back to Bangkok, it also meant Mofok’s biggest wish would be fulfilled as he later that night
got to go up on the stage at Tai-Pan to collect the runners-up trophy. All in all it was a great weekend with lots of laughs, football and drinks, more guys should try to come next time!