Brook No Resistance
Toothless Striking
Grilled realised that they might have to do some adjusting to new coach Han Lik Tsun's tactical philosophy, as they were schooled by a BBrookies side that had not quite set II.4 alight. An above-average crowd of nearly sixty thousand turned out to witness Han's managerial debut, which despite the loss was arguably better than his performance in central defence.
It soon became clear that Grilled were playing deeper than they did, while BBrookies weren't the most adventurous either. However, the visitors got the first bite of the cherry about a hundred seconds into the game, with Englishman Robert MacNayer finding the post from outside the area.
Grilled mostly coped fine for the next ten minutes, with Han even placing a superbly-timed tackle to send Brazilian forward Carlos Manuel Andrade crashing to the ground completely fairly. Unfortunately, playing so conservatively gave BBrookies ample opportunity to try their feet from afar, and eventually a right screamer from the right boot of Yannick Illner flew past Valdir's reach.
The fans were concerned, but less so when the ever-dependable Rotteveel accelerated past Waldick de Deus, who was never renowned for his speed, and placed the ball past Min How, in doing so scoring for all eight competitive games he has appeared in this season. Grilled might have celebrated too hard, however, as they were criminally unprepared for BBrookie's reprisal, which led to Mohd Nafuzi bin Mustaffa chipping Valdir in the very next minute.
Being a goal down might still have been a tenable situation for the Birds, but they made a less than ideal situation much worse when newly-minted captain Valdir found both his central defenders less than communicative in the 29th minute. He was not completely free of blame as his throw was longer than needed, but the way his defence watched as Carlos Manuel Andrade raced onto it was aggravating to the goalie, who let loos with a stream of invective after Andrade scored.
An exciting second half followed as Grilled kept the faith, and shots from Subri and Penati went heartbreakingly close, though they were fortunate that Mohd Nafuzi bin Mustaffa was less than clinical himself.
BBrookies had the last word, with Polish left winger Henryk Heinze alert as the incalculable Ahijit Kumar mislead the whole Grilled backline with a reverse pass. Subri might have reduced the deficit a few minutes later, but disappointingly fluffed it straight into the waiting arms of Min How.
