The School of Business dominated proceedings in the first half and rightfully took the lead through Nicholas Yip’s looping header, only for Team Engin striker Chew Yew Song to level the score at the stroke of half time.

A heavy downpour during the interval then forced both teams to wait almost an hour for it to subside, before the match referee deemed the pitch too waterlogged to be played on.

Event organizers were unable to postpone the match as the IFG would officially conclude later that evening, with the winning team contributing more points to their faculty than the runners-up in the race to decide the overall IFG champion.

Team managers of both sides were thus given the option of sharing the points or deciding a winner through a penalty shootout. They opted for the latter.

Mohamed Yasin, a second year undergraduate and Team Engin manager, said that he “had faith” that his players would be able to win in a shootout.

“We told ourselves that we would rather work for the points today (by winning a shootout) rather than splitting points,” he said.

Yasin also said that confidence among his players was high after their morale-boosting semi-final victory over the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine.

“Although we lost to (the School of) Business in the group stage, our confidence has been high after we came back from behind to beat Medicine in the semis,” he said. “I then told the players that next time when we met Business we had to beat them.”

Chew, a third year undergraduate, agreed with his manager. “Although the atmosphere wasn’t right because of the weather, our confidence remained high. There was trust among my teammates and it showed in the end.

“To keep ourselves motivated and to motivate each other, we also circulated emails among our teammates during the (entire duration of the) competition,” he said.

Confidence was also high in the School of Business camp going into the game. Ryan Yeo, a Business freshman who plays as full back, said, “At the start of the game we were confident because we beat them (Faculty of Engineering) 1-0 in the group stage.”

Yeo also said that his team had been the better side during regulation time, and blamed the heavy rain for his team’s defeat.

“In the first half we were dominating. We felt we were the better team. We feel we deserve better,” he said.
 
“We believe we could have won if there was no rain. But there’s nothing we can do about it. It’s faith.”

Coincidentally, both teams had qualified to contest the final after defeating their semi-final opponents on penalty shootouts. The School of Business beat the Faculty of Science while the Faculty of Engineering overcame the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine.