Rui En Tries To Learn Soccer From Elvin Ng, Fails, Then (Spoiler Alert!) Comes Out Victorious

Just a few years ago, we never would’ve imagined we’d see Rui En, once famed — and, to be honest, kinda feared — for her intimidating ice queen persona, prancing around Yishun’s Futsal Arena as she engages in a soccer battle with Elvin Ng and his buddies.

You read that right. In the third episode of variety show Dare To Try, which features the 40-year-old actress experiencing “a day in the life” of her fellow artistes, Rui En meets up with Elvin for one-on-one lessons in Tabata, which the latter started doing more of during the circuit breaker, and soccer, which he plays twice a week.

As the duo is known to be quite close (they’ve described themselves as “an old couple”), their lessons are peppered with doses of bickering, bantering, and light-hearted jabs at each other. Heads up for ‘Ruivin’ fans who can’t get enough of their more recent pairings in Mister Flower and Old is Gold.

The highlight of the video, in our personal opinion, is the football crash course. Rui En says she has never played soccer before, but she arrives fully dressed for the occasion like a champ in a bright yellow jersey and matching knee-high socks.

The class starts out relatively smoothly as Elvin coaches a very attentive-looking Rui En in several basic techniques, but it soon becomes clear that aiming is not exactly her strong suit.

“I obviously have big issues with my sense of direction,” she admits after being shown kicking the ball into the camera (watch out, camera person!). Another one of her attempts to score a goal is apparently so bad — even with some assistance from Elvin — that her poor teacher dramatically collapses to the ground, begging for help.

After a few more practice rounds, Elvin springs a surprise on his student: he has invited a few of his friends to join them for a game. What follows are some very amusing snippets of Rui En screaming, laughing, and scurrying around as she tries to keep up with her far more experienced opponents — again, not something we would’ve expected from the old her.

“A lot of sports might seem easy, but you realise how tough they are when you actually try them yourself,” Rui En muses.

Things start to look up for Rui En and Elvin (who are on the same team) during the penalty kick when she actually — spoiler alert! — manages to score a goal. The newly emerged “star player” (as Elvin put it) later scores another one, leading Ruivin United to be crowned the champions.

There’s a bit of a twist, though: Rui En confesses that the match was fixed, which means the guys probably went easy on her and let her score those goals. In any case, it certainly made for some very entertaining viewing for the rest of us.

Catch all episodes of Dare to Try on meWATCH.

Photos: Elvin Ng/Instagram, meWATCH screengrabs