HMM: champion of GFL 2008

well,

This year's HMM (Himpunan Mahasiswa Mesin) football team just managed to win the trophy of Ganesha Football League. I think it was the first football champion title HMM's ever acquired since I studied in ITB (CMIIW). That's also why I never watched their journey from the beginning of the tournament. All I heard was winning reports from friends who watched the entire matches since the preliminary rounds. HMM went to the final after defeating HMS, if I'm not mistaken. And guess who we faced on the final match of the competition? GEA.

Woohoo. If you know what I mean, GEA and HMM has not been in good relations concerning activities that involves massive members. Let's say the graduation in which every student association always do a parade and when they met each other, the started taunting one another not to mention several "shadowy" provocative voices and those thrown objects with questioned source. Massive clash has been almost inevitable everytime they meet. And now, the two met on the final of a football match. Surely, both sides would bring as many supporters as possible. And they did.

Now let's review the match itself. Well, in my opinion, HMM was totally owning since the beginning of the game. It was almost they were playing half the field. HMM players kept pushing and pushing again until (around) mid-half-time, they scored the first goal resulted from a chaos in front of GEA's net. 1-0 for HMM.
Unfortunately, not long after that, resulting from almost the same situation, one of GEA's player took a shot from a sharp right angle which hit the left bar of HMM's before it finnaly bounced into the net. 1-1 draw, and not long after that, half time whistle blew.

Second half. The game was more interesting during the latter half of the round. Both HMM and GEA exchanged in turns of attacking and defending. Although most of the ball was played midfield, there were several penetration attempts made by both sides attackers. HMM's net was more threatened on the second half as GEA's player became more aggressive. But last night HMM's goalkeeper performance was top notch. He managed to control the situation and always get the possession of the ball everytime it entered the dangerous zone. Until finally, mid-time of the second half, HMM got a free kick just outside of the penalty box. Although the distance between the free kick spot to the goal was quite far, the execution was flawless. A beautiful lob ball delivered by the free-kick-taker went over GEA's goalkeeper and entered the net. It was sudden cheers from HMM's supporters. 2-1 for HMM.

Although had regained the lead, HMM never stopped pressing. The fighting spirit shown by HMM players in both defending and counter attack finally paid off. Referee blew the final whistle and there were those joyful cheers. Cheers of victory.

And this is where the atmosphere actually became more interesting. While all of HMM supporters went into the field to congratulate their team members, GEA's supporters (with their uncanny yellow uniforms) also went into the field and slowly invading to the HMM's side of the field. The committee quickly took anticipation by moving in and made a barricade between both supporters. Strange enough, I didn't feel high tension like there was going to be a clash. HMM's supporters kept pouring into the field heading to the players and celebrating together their victory seemingly ignoring all of those GEA's supporters whom still kept on searching some holes between committee's barricade.

After a while, GEA's supporters backed off and started to gather while making circles. HMM was still celebrating with the team while suddenly, all of those circled GEA started doing pushups in the middle of the field. Some of us thought that it was somekind of punishment for themselves, some of us thought that it was to show togetherness for their defeat. But the funny part, one of us mentioned that it was a warming up before they were going to start a fight with HMM. It was actually kinda funny. Another weird thing was that, when the committee was going to handed out medals to GEA's players, none of them went to the podium to accept it. What the hell was that suppose to mean? Finally it was mostly the supporters of GEA instead who moved and received the medals in place of the players.

The final celebration was not that grand. There were that "We are the champion" song played and some firecrackers, but not very lively IMHO. But I'm sure it was very monumental for all of us, players and supporters. Last but not least, of course, the infamous Yell Boyz performed by all of the massive supporters and players with high spirit. The event ended with continous congratulations from HMM's supporters to their wonderful players and also after taking several pictures for documentation, everyone went back to their former activities and went home.

And uh, FYI, one of HMM's player also got the title of Best Player. Bob, was it? Although we weren't able to snatch the title of top scorer and best supporter just yet which fell to the hand of HMS and HME consecutively.

Keep on fighting HMM and hopefully this will be the first victory of many to come!