S.League 2005: What Ifs?

1) We all know that one of the closest S.League title races has just concluded in 2007, where 3 top teams finished just 2 points apart.

Did you know that same thing could have happened in 2005, if Woodlands did beat Tampines in the final game that season?

That game ended up as Woodlands 1-2 Tampines. Let's just assume that if it had been the other way round, the final table would have looked like:

# Teams---- P- W- D L F- A- GD Pts
1 Tampines- 27 17 3 7 76 36 40 54
2 Woodlands 27 16 5 6 58 43 15 53 (3)
3 SAFFC---- 27 15 7 5 54 41 13 52 (2)

What a great opportunity lost for Woodlands to clinch 2nd-place!


2) With Paya Lebar earning just 1 win & 1 draw from 27 games in 2005, the league should have done away with this team for the sake of its competitiveness / creditability. (Super Reds was in similar situation during the first half of 2007, thank god it improved siginificantly afterwards)

How would the league table have looked like if all games involving Paya Lebar were ignored? Here you are:

# Teams------ P- W- D L- F- A- GD Pts
1 Tampines--- 24 15 3 06 65 35 +30 48
2 SAFFC------ 24 12 7 05 46 37 +09 43
3 Woodlands-- 24 12 5 07 47 43 +04 41
4 Home------- 24 11 4 09 52 40 +12 37
5 Albirex---- 24 09 8 07 43 31 +12 35
6 Young Lions 24 10 5 09 37 34 +03 35
7 Balestier-- 24 07 6 11 35 50 -15 27
8 Geylang---- 24 05 5 14 30 53 -23 20
9 Sinchi----- 24 04 3 17 21 53 -32 12 **3 pts deducted


Basically almost every team parted away with 9 points (from 3 wins against Paya Lebar), except Geylang & Young Lions. The position of each team also remained the same, although Tampines had the most GD (+12) written-off due to that...