All the world's a pitch

"I figure I might have better chances being promoted in a workplace than here."

Okay, okay, so the Phuture Physicists have all finished their papers. Let me talk a little Physics here so as to be on the same WAVELENGTH as them. As the promos (sadly?) draw to a close and as more and more people take to the streets screaming like insane fags because they're done with promos.. let us take an interesting analogy to find out what promos is truly all about.

Being a passionate soccer fan (sometimes), I say all the world's a pitch!

Soccer pitch. Why so?

Because during promos, mugging gets tough and reaches FEVER PITCH.

Okay besides that.

Don't you notice it's in line with the promotion-relegation system in soccer? Well I wanted to post about this yesterday right after my papers but heck, since newspapers only publish soccer results the next day, I thought I might as well do the same so as to give a sense of realism.

Here's just a little soccer article, proudly brought to you by TCS. After the World Cup soccer results in June, I figured we needed a little deviation.

THE TALK COCK TRIBUNE

TEAM YJ SECURES PROMOTION TO PREMIERSHIP!

BISHAN - After a highly scintillating match against the likes of the all-star Chemistry team, Team YJ managed to secure promotion to the Premiership by playing to a draw. Teams in the Championship are promoted on a lenient basis - for they are asked to play four matches and one friendly, the friendly being against the n00b GP team which usually poses no threat at all.

After warming up on Monday with the friendly against GP, which Team YJ comfortably put two goals past the poor sods, they lost the second match against Econs as the players from Team YJ couldn't decide which goal to score at. (I switched to another essay question with 10 minutes left, gg myself.)

Criteria to be promoted from the Championship (J1) to the Premiership (J2) means you have to win at least one match (ie get E) and have at least two draws (two Ss). As long as you have five points from any of these four matches, you have a point AND a case to be promoted. Think of it this way, if you get five points in any combination, you'd seriously get promoted. Any grade from A to E is 3 points, S is worth 1 point, U is 0.

Team YJ started off the third day of the campaign rather brightly by securing an easy win over the Mathematics team, who fielded only ten players. Their starting lineup included Functions, Graphing, Inequality, Differentiation, Integration, Differential, Progression, Summation, Binominal and Power. Needless to say their star keeper, Logarithm (Chapter 0) did not want to come out to the pitch to play, so Team YJ was spared the agony of being denied a great victory against the Mathematics team.

However, the French team they played on Wednesday afternoon yielded no positive result, for the hardcore players were certainly out to damage - and they did. It is also noted that Team YL, who played the same team that afternoon, also got owned. The third day of the team's promotion campaign was then seriously in doubt - for after three games (excluding GP), they had only three points secured from Mathematics, with Chemistry still hanging in the balance.

It is no secret that Chemistry has always been a squad that Team YJ fears, for they got whooped soundly by the Chemistry team 9-0 back in June, and frequent thrashings in the lecture test (0-8 in September) as well as revision papers (0-8 again) indicated that Team YJ was hardly ready to play Chemistry.

Still, up against the Chemistry team, Team YJ's manager, also happened to be called YJ, decided to employ a new tactic, the 4-4-2. Considering that the Chemistry paper was also 4-4-2 (Section C, 40 marks, Section B, 40 marks, Section A, 20 marks), he successfully countered their strike force. Unlike the usual times where YJ would play a 2-4-4 agains them (ie starting with Section A, MCQ and taking a bloody long time to finish it), he decided to take down the midfield first.

Then the Chemistry backline of four. After breaching their defence, YJ then tried to stop their 2-man strikeforce. He took half an hour to do it. It must also be known that promotion matches usually are long-lasting and the players are required to have lots of stamina. The warm-up GP match had two halves of one and a half hours, so it didn't really matter.

For matches against the Mathematics and Chemistry teams, the opposition were required to report at outrageous times like 8am in the morning, although the matches won't start till 8:15am. Somehow the crowd wants to see both teams' lineups before the match actually starts proper. Now that's quite lame and stupid. But what is more lame and stupid is that each match lasts three hours, a veritable test of stamina and guts.

Well, and Team YJ, for all their endurance and determination, managed to pull off a draw against the Chemistry team. In the afternoon session against the French team (again yes), the lousy referee (invigilator) gave YJ the advantage by giving instructions in English, a language that Team YJ favoured and which the French team did not understand. The referee sometimes is indeed very important in every match, though YJ (manager) got a yellow card for trying to be smart aleck by arguing with the referee (aka dissent - I asked if I could write essay in pencil, since they didn't allow correction fluid -.-")

Have you ever heard of not using correction fluid in an exam? That's like saying you're playing a soccer match where boots are prohibited. Anyway despite not knowing who the players of the opposition were - as well as having almost zero knowledge of their strengths and weaknesses (ie I didn't understand any bloody essay question), Team YJ just anyhow double-marked one of their players tightly. And at the end of it, Talk Cock Tribune reckons it'll pay off.

Plus, as results against the French team are taken by aggregate score (which YJ won quite a few spectacular battles, particularly in the very verbal game where Team YJ whooped the Frenchies 5-0), YJ is confident of securing three points here. And thus when the match ended yesterday against the French, the team was jubilant in celebrating promotion with seven points in the bag out of a possible twelve.

All the world's a pitch - with some getting promoted earlier than others. Some teams, fresh from the GEP League, have secured promotion as early as Wednesday, after gaining six points from two matches. They are wanting to top the Championship "for fun". As for the rest who might not make five points, don't worry or be disheartened, for like the English football leagues, there are always the playoffs (appeals).

For Team YJ and their manager, they are ecstatic and wish to celebrate their promotion the whole weekend long. Understanding that certain teams are yet to play their last, vital match against the rather strong team of Biology, I will reduce the distraction level by blogging less this weekend. You can call me lazy, but at least I'd be playing in the Premiership next season.

As the team's manager, who wishes only to be known as YJ, says, "I'm ducking glad to be promoted, man. Even if it's on the last day, it took a lot of effort, consistency and hard work that got me here. I totally deserved the wins against Maths and French as well as that hard-fought draw against Chemistry. Now it's time for a very long post-season party." Yes indeed.