Winning performance

Samreth Seiha takes a moment after being mobbed by his colleagues for his match-winning performance

If you read my football blog postings, you'll know that Samreth Seiha takes my vote as Cambodia's number 1 goalkeeper. In the past year he's been vying with Sou Yaty for the green jersey, both at club, Ministry of National Defense (MND), and at international level for the U23 and full teams. He's a great shot stopper and Saturday proved he's no slouch when it comes to keeping a cool head under pressure when he took the honours in the penalty shoot-out stage of MND's Hun Sen Cup tie with plucky Koh Kong. It was all square, and goalless, after 90 minutes, still deadlocked after 30 minutes of extra time, hence the penalties. Seiha saved one of the first five regulation spot-kicks, with the score at 3-3. He then palmed away another before grabbing the ball, turning quickly and despatched his penalty kick in the corner of the net and wheeled away in delight before being mobbed by his teammates. A double hero. It doesn't get much better than that. And the first man to hug him was his rival, and pal, Sou Yaty.
Still on the football front, although Kuoch Sokumpheak didn't make the grade in Indonesia during a less than well organized trial last week, we will have a Cambodian player playing abroad this season. It's Phnom Penh Crown's left-winger and national player Chan Rithy, who has signed on for the Royal Thai Army team, who were promoted to the Thai Premier League at the end of last season. He was due to make his debut in their Queen's Cup game yesterday. Rithy, now 27, has been with Crown for the last four years after plying his trade with Khemara and the Cambodian Army teams before that. Good luck to Rithy, who has been one of the outstanding players in the CPL for a few years now.
I took a tuk tuk out to the airport early Saturday morning to deliver Ting for her flight back to Taiwan, via Saigon. She had a great time, her words not mine, and made some friends whether it be the young girls at Tonle Bati or the silk weavers on Koh Dach, so I'm sure she'll be back sometime in the future. Ting is a nurse in Taiwan and left her job to come to Cambodia and then she's off to southern India in a few weeks, her sixth trip there in the last couple of years. Nurses are always in demand she tells me so she shouldn't have a problem getting a job again once her current round of country-hopping comes to an end.

Ting says her goodbyes at the airport