Futsal

Last night I played in my first university futsal tournament. Completely organised and run by students, the night tournament was an impressive event to take part in. In fact, all participants and organisers came from the large number of international students. Apparently Malaysians aren’t very good at futsal, preferring to play badminton, table tennis, squash, basketball etc.

Groups of students make their own teams, segregated by nationality. In all there were seven teams: Zimbabwe, Keyna, Nigeria, the Arabs, Tanzania, Pakistan and team International. The notable exception is team Malaysia. Not really belonging to a particular nationality, myself and a group of friends formed “Team International” consisting of and Australian-Italian, a German, a Swede, an Iranian, a Mauritian a West Malaysian and myself – an Australia-Sri Lankan.

The skill level in the tournament was high and most matches were played in good spirit. However, there were some instances where some teams took things a bit too seriously, which did spoil part of the night.

Play got underway quite late – at 10pm, and the tournament eventually finished at about 4am the next day. It was very tiring, and we all felt it for the next few days. Although “Team International” put up a decent showing, Tanzania were the victors on the day beating the Kenyans in the final.