Falling

Alas, my beloved Phenoms have lost to Club Pinoy during the semi-finals. For the over-worried mothers it was a bittersweet loss. All their supporters didn't want to see them lose, particularly to a team full of dirty players...but our boys were getting hurt hardcore out there and for some reason the referees were barely doing anything about it.

I'm not very good with the rules of the game, but if you intentionally injure one of your opponents that has to stand for a free throw or benching the offending player or something.

It wasn't right. It wasn't fair. I'd like to say the referees were bribed, but I don't want to sling allegations.

Club Pinoy is just damn filthy. That's all I can say about their team.

They hurt one of our best players during the regular season. Intentional, and obvious. Luckily there were honest referees during that game.

And, big surprise, guess who got hurt during the semi-finals by THE SAME PLAYER from Club Pinoy? Augh, it frustrates me. And you know what makes it worse? Their (Club Pinoy's) coach is a doctor. And he just stood there like an idiot while the officials and our team tried to help our fallen teammate.

Then there was another time, one of Club's players jumped for a rebound off our net and once he landed he punched one of our players in the face. Ref, DO SOMETHING!

So, like I said, the loss was bittersweet. Noone wanted to see us lose, but if we're just going to get injured by underhanded players like that then maybe the wisest thing is to just back off.

Not that we backed off, the Phenoms did their best. But how could you not get frustrated when, for some reason or another, the other team keeps getting awarded free throws for every basket that you sink? (At one point they gave the other team a bonus free throw 'cuz, apparently, my brother and his friend were "yelling too loud.")

Anyway, as a result, next week we're vying for 3rd or 4th place with whoever lost the 2nd game. I'm assuming NE Express lost to Sovereign. That's another upset. Not that I want to see NE Express win but they were the champs last year. You wouldn't have been able to tell that judging from last Sunday's game. I'd say only half of the team showed up, pretty much making it obvious they'd given up. And in the first 2 minutes alone Sovereign was already leading 14-0. The NE players that showed up had heart and they worked hard, but it just wasn't good enough without the rest of their team. It wasn't very sportsmanlike of them to give up like that. So now the Phenoms get to have that rematch against Flamingo's team...it's just not the championship match I had imagined it'd be. Will they be a no-show for next week's game as well? Who knows? Or maybe they'd like to play against my Phenoms for fun.

At least the Phenoms and NE Express play the game by the book. That was a major criticism about these two teams when they came into the league. "These kids don't know how to play basketball dirty Filipino style! They'll get whipped!" And yeah, we got hurt pretty bad once in a while, but we led the league during regular season fairly and justly. And now that the season's almost done, at least we don't have to worry about our boys getting hurt anymore.