Rangers Repelled
The Joe and Wilson Show
Grilled Birds dispensed with the pre-season formality of dispatching semi-professional opposition much more overwhelmingly, as they trounced Sentosa Rangers nine to nothing at their Sentosa Dome with a junior midfield.
Joe Stern, under heavy criticism for his low set-piece conversion rate of late, sprinted out wide around the stretched Rangers defence to bag Grilled's first for the new season on four minutes. The fresh country air of France must have done
Zhan Ju-Hau a world of good, as he hounded Tian Teck-Onn incessantly into submission and drove in the second. The complexion of the game could have been made over when the footballing gods blessed tall right winger Joe Wei with an open look at goal after everyone else had been suckered by a queerly floating corner, but he was too stunned to make the simple connection required.
Wilson Kearney thumbed his nose at such incompetent finishing by adding two soft goals before the half-time whistle brought some respite to the beleaguered Rangers, who had winger Chang Ching-Hwa sent off and livewire forward Huang Xi-qi slightly hurt in between the goals.
A ten-men Rangers were never going to be able to hold off Grilled's motivated
Au-Yong Siu-Yue and
Tim Blissenbach in midfield, and the two hogged the ball throughout, giving it up only to
Joe Stern to finish off a volley when a gaping opening materialised. Blissenbach cleared up a messy bit of control by Mohd Nizaruddin bin Saad with a timely tackle to rob him for Grilled's sixth, and Kearney claimed his fifth career hat-trick almost too easily two minutes later. By this time, the match looked almost a farce as Rangers hadn't ventured out of their defensive third of the field for ages.
Joe Stern put them to the sword with a scintillating dash cutting Rangers' halfhearted defence to shreds, topped by a delightful lob, and then converting a penalty kick after Tellskär had been chopped down in the box to put himself one up on Kearney.
