Stalled By Cannoneers
Two-faced Riviera
Grilled Birds demonstrated that soccer is a game of two halves in Niederösterreich, Austria, where they encountered the black and white striped Q-Stall Cannoneers. Grilled's players began tight man-to-man marking from the kickoff, with even Hobson and Chiew-Yen assigned defenders to stick to. As the Cannoneers chose a defensive 5-4-1, Grilled became sadly disjointed, and were fortunate to escape lone Cannoneer striker Floyd Hassoun's lashed strike in the ninth minute, after a patient build-up through the middle. The linesman decided that the ball had brushed Seng-Huat, and from the corner Malaysian teenager Kamarulzaman bin Ismail flipped the ball overhead to centreback Gerhard Jovanovic, who struck on the volley to put Cannoneers ahead. Grilled abandoned their defensive posture for a moment, and a succession of crisp passes found
Tim Blissenbach alone with Pöschl. Blissenbach couldn't keep his cool and aimed high by inches. A few Cannoneer players were irritated by Grilled's constant barking up their ankles, and midfielders Gerhard Goettel and Per Knutsson were pulled up for yellow cards for their reactions. That didn't dampen their prowness, and they played a reverse pass to bring their captain Hassoun up alone against Huel-sheng, and the experienced Australian pushed the ball into goal after two half-steps. Thai sweeper
Nui Pakpao was still screaming at his inept backline when the Cannoneers attacked swiftly from a poor Grilled kickoff, creating a three-on-one situation against Pakpao which ended in star fullback Martin Kurz helping himself to a goal.
Grilled started the second half looking like they finally knew what they were doing, and frustrated the Cannoneers' play before winning their first corner.
Antonio Fernández Riviera ran to take it, but regular taker
Tim Hobson was hardly shortchanged as he could show his air supremacy off for once. His picture-perfect header was placed with much strength inside the left post. Hobson, who gave Riviera the thumbs-up for that, happily yielded a penalty to the young midfielder, who correctly chose the left post for his spot kick. Even with a goal and an assist though, Riviera was one of the worst players on display, and spent most of his time falling over his own feet. The Cannoneers were getting nowhere in this period of the match, and Martin Kurz got his team's third booking after Chiew-Yen stuck to him like a fly and Kurz had to shake him off with his arms.
Au-Yong Siu-Yue was a reliable force in midfield alongside
Asher Stanton, and was disappointed not to start his scoring record with Grilled with a strange curling shot in the 70th minute. The Cannoneers' goalkeeper must have changed direction in mid-air to twist and tip that over. Grilled kept out further Cannoneer assaults, but did not have enough stamina to press their momentum on offence, and
Weng Seng-Huat's yellow card for impedance was the only notable event of the remainder of the game.
