Midfield Mangle
Double Treble
it was a day of mixed fortunes for Grilled as Stern and Hobson both earned hat-tricks, while nineteen-year old trainees
Au-Yong Siu-Yue and
Jon Andrea Rottman both limped away from Louth with moderate injuries. The 7-1 victory was ironic as Grilled had set out to work on their collective defending under new coach Frank Ohmo.
Hobson for one did not heed his instructions as he enjoyed Stanton's good supply and gave his team a sixth minute lead. Blazing had started with only nine men in a 2-5-1 formation, but were not short of grit. Nicky Geuens went a little too far with an untidy lunge on Siu-Yue, which put Grilled's brightest midfielder on the field out of the game.
This handed little-used Spaniard
Antonio Fernández Riviera a great opportunity, and he literally ran off the bench but proved inadequate in filling Siu-Yue's boots. Homegrown talent Wil Bruce robbed him of the ball before weaving past Tuan-Mu and embarrasing Huel-sheng in goal.
Grilled came back through a
Joe Stern double in nine minutes, as they harried the opposition into poor passes. Stern, who had earlier ended on his butt as he attempted a sharp turn on the wet grass, made no mistake when presented with a beauty of a flick-on by Rottman. Riviera did the best he could to even things up as he slithered over the ball in defence, though thankfully Jeff Rice's snap shot was off-target.
Joe Stern calmed things down in the 36th minute as the rain made an already superb free-kick impossible to hold on to by Ronaldsson.
It was just like old days when Hobson crashed Kolesov's cross-pass against van der Krift and into the net in the 53rd, for which the assist-a-game Bulgarian should be credited. Grilled were untroubled with three goals to their advantage when a heated midfield tussle saw young Kevin Ryan give Rottman a crunching tackle, forcing Grilled to another substitution. Öhmo was seen holding his head in despair, but faced with the choice of Magunsson, Chiew-Yen or Seng-Huat sent the 21 year-old defender on as a replacement.
Seng-Huat immediately fell in in front of the defence and shackled Rice, allowing the fullbacks to push up. Riviera atoned for his mistakes with a goal making it 5-1, before Hobson completed an oh-so-familiar hat-trick with Kolesov again the provider. Blazing were clearly tiring out as their skilful but untested midfield wilted in worsening conditions, and Stern was able to use his pace to get to Hobson's failed tap-on and give Grilled some more consolation.
