Prusian Blues
The Farmer Bunnies' friendly in the Dominican Republic against II.2 club Prusia FC kicked off late, and ended with a 3-0 win for the Buns against their recent Copa Consolación holder hosts. Both started very defensively with Prusia's Polish expat Józef Ossowski the only recognized forward on the pitch, and he would be yellow carded by the 25th minute, for hacking
Masato Kitano down after being crowded out once too often.
That tempered Ossowski's approach significantly, and Bunnies then scored twice against the run of play in quick succession, with captain
Ong Li Jing finding
Toh Eng Guang and
Arun Ponnusamy with deep crosses from the right wing.
Amirul Jufri Khairil and
Boyd Nguyen came on for the second half, which only had
Gary Johnson blast past Czech centreback David Knížek with ten minutes remaining, for his first goal at senior level.
Ong admitted that there was a huge dose of fortune in his pair of assists, while the 18 year-old Johnson was apparently over the moon at scoring. "He was flooding his group chats with the replay!"
Ghaffur Ramzi laughed. "But I am like, going to do that when it's my turn too."
There would be a mostly-silent sendoff for a number of trainees before that, however, including Gan Chee Pin and Teo Teck Ting for Grilled Birds; Siew Feng Dong, Yip Teck Eng, Lim Chang Beng, Santosh Varma, Seet Teck Liang and Ouda Abou Alam for Farmer Bunnies; and Jin Zhiyuan, Hj Latip bin Suhaime, Jay Kareem and Quek Woon Feng for Grilled International.
This was a tough pill for most of these hopefuls to swallow, in particular for those who had been highly-touted while in their youth academies, such as Gan, Varma and Seet. Lanky left winger Gan had for one been training on and off with the Wings for over two years since his official graduation right after turning seventeen, but without receiving any solid offers in all that time. "I suppose it's finally time to accept reality." he sighed. "After getting accepted for a business major with a private university, the decision got easier to make."
It was good news for
Darrell Watson, though, as the Rabbits midfielder signed a provisional contract with the senior squad, about a month after eligibility. Watson's elder brother Mitchell - six years his senior - had formerly been a winger with Sentosa's TSKFC, but had decided to leave football after the club was liquidated three seasons back, with his farewell game being a 0-2 loss against semi-pro club shoot'n'save.
"Better late than never!" Rabbits scout Tong Han Kong, who had taken the lad on after he had been rejected by III.9 outfit Killer Football Club, said. "Darrell knows that he's starting behind quite a few others in terms of his development, and whether he makes it is now up to his efforts."
