The crowd was waiting eagerly for the match between Victoria School and Raffles Institution to begin. Both teams had come this far without a single loss but there will have to be a winner today in the final game of the National Inter-School Floorball Championships 2009 (‘C’ Division). Supporters from Raffles Institution came in droves and outnumbered the Victoria crowd. However, they were undaunted as they made up for the lack in numbers by their relentless cheering.

The first period was packed with end-to-end action with both teams displaying their attacking prowess and defending tightly at the same time. Most evidently, the captains of both teams put in an outstanding perfomance, leading by example from the back in the case for Victoria School and at the front for Raffles Institution. Both sides came close many times with Raffles having the closest of chances with two successive shots hitting the goal posts. It was no surprise that the period ended goalless.

National Inter-School Floorball Championships 2009 (‘C’ Division)
Victoria School vs Raffles Institution
Republic Polytechnic
2-0 (0-0, 1-0, 1-0)

Victoria finally made the breakthrough in the second period with a well-worked simple double which went in after rebounding off the goalkeeper. This came after they took control of the game for long periods, but Raffles never backed down and slowly regain the initiative to start putting Victoria under huge pressure for the remining of the period.

The third period was an intensive one, with Raffles attacking hard as they needed to score. The Victoria goalkeeper was kept busy as he made a great number of saves to keep Raffles at bay. Raffles finally seemed to have gotten their break when a rare mistake by Victoria sent the Raffles captain through on goal. In the one-on-one situation however, the Victoria goalkeeper made yet another fantastic save and that pretty much sums up the game for Raffles. Victoria then scored their second goal after the Raffles goalkeeper failed to hold on to a shot.

With the time running out, Victoria called for a time out to reorganise the defence. It worked fairly well as they were content to keep the ball away from their opponents and created several chances too. With 90 seconds left, it was the Raffles team who called for a time out and they returned with 6 field players in a bid to turn the game around. The players from Victoria stood firm in defence and with seconds to go, the crowd began the countdown to being crowned champions.

The finals was a wonderful display of exciting floorball action which no doubt set the adrenaline pumping from the start to the end. As the finals draw to a close, it will be time to go back to the drawing board for all teams as they prepare for the challenge again next year.