Day 3 – Match 4 2010-06-24
Our 4th and final match of the day was against Team Fuyong, rather than the rematch against Team Victory which we had been looking forward to. There seemed little point in playing Fuyong again – we had already lost badly to them twice – what was the point of rubbing our noses in it? The way that the tournament is organised is flawed in this respect. If there are 22 teams in a league, it seems positively wrong to have 3 matches against the same team – or 4 matches against the same team, as happened to Team Victory who had been looking forward to playing us again as they had enjoyed our previous close match. Instead they will be playing Team Zero (the one we are paired with in our superteam) for the 4th time and they are not at all happy about it. There were more discussions with the ref and the organisers before we reluctantly went to the pitch to commence our thrashing by our old nemesis, Team Fuyong. The game started with Team Fuyong slamming in a quick first goal using their tried and tested dribble along the back wall and slide it in technique. There was then a scuffle in the right yellow goal corner before they surged forward again to score – twice. The ball was then stuck up at the blue end for a while but Team Fuyong brought it down and slammed in another and another, before the ball was removed to have its batteries changed. The score was now 5-0 to them. The new strategy for the goalie that Eric and Andrew had been working on seemed a bit poor, but it is hard to think of any strategy for a goalie that would work against two such fast, agile and aggressive robots as these. We were seriously outclassed – again. The score rose to 8-0. We had one opportunity to score with a long kick at the goal, but they saved it easily and then scored again and again. 10-0. and then 13-0. The Team Fuyong goalie went into whirly mode – just rotating on the spot very fast – and was taken off the pitch for a minute as a damaged robot. Would we have a chance now, playing against just one robot? The Team Fuyong forward came close to scoring an own goal, and we held our breath for a moment, but then it took the ball down to our goal and our rather random goalie failed to save it. And they popped in a 14th goal moments before the half time whistle. Score at half time – 14-0. At half time Eric and Andrew again attempted to change the goalie’s somewhat random wandering behaviour to slow it down a bit – we’ll see if this makes a difference. The second half continued much as the first half, with Team Fuyong scoring goal after goal after goal. Ten minutes have seldom passed so agonizingly. It would have been nice if our robots had been able to see the ball better, or get to it faster, or even touch it sometimes. Their robot is so fast that at kickoff after a goal, where we start off about 2cm from the ball and they start off 30cm from the ball and both team captains press the robot start button at the same time, their robot gets to the ball before ours does, and we just do not stand a chance. The final score for the match was 29-0 – the first match in which we didn’t score anything. But a pretty predictable result.