Dæhli Delight
Buljo Everywhere
Grilled's reserves were floored by eight to nothing by Norge Division Six club FC Dæhli, whose garish pink-and-blue kit was about as electric as their football.
The 2000-odd who had made it to The Cooking Pot were expecting a competitive affair, but Lik-Tsun had rested all his first-teamers, and the purely second-string starting eleven was hopelessly outclassed. While the forwards were willing enough to run, Grilled simply didn't see enough of the ball, and the only wonder was that it took the visitors seven minutes to break the deadlock through Frodo Steinmann.
The star attraction was probably big Norwegian forward Jonathan Buljo, who made a habit of flinging himself at the ball if he had the barest hope of winning it. One such antic saw him crash headfirst into the pitch, which thankfully was reasonably soft after the recent showers. He emerged with no lasting damage, but plenty of mud on his face.
Undaunted, Buljo proceeded to run at a seemingly lost cause in the 35th minute, and to his surprise both Mohd Firdaus and Bao-Tam were slow to react. Arriving a split second before the Grilled goalie, he clipped the ball into an empty net.
Buljo squeezed another in a few minutes later, while defenders Dominik Puntigam and Luís Gustavo Machacaz racked up another two by the 43rd minute. Buljo wasn't quite ready to give up the limelight, and lashed wildly at a blocked shot, slamming it at an incredible speed past Bao-Tam to complete his hat-trick before half-time.
That was also the end of the game for Buljo, as
Sim Tong Ping had raised his boot high in an attempt to deflect the strike; Buljo's knee felt the full force of the impact, and he had to limp off for the Italian Oreste Evangelisti. He can at least take heart in doing more in forty-five minutes, than most players achieve in ninety.
Inge Johansen picked up where his countryman left off, and terrorized the Grilled defence for much of the second half. A spectacular effort of his clipped the crossbar in the 50th minute, but he pulled himself together and coolly beat Bao-Tam at the far-post soon after.
Grilled threw on
Ângelo Cunha Simões for
Zheng Lihai, and promptly conceded another as the defence watched Jianu Neamtu dash through. Tong Ping then got sent off for a second yellow card, but strangely enough Grilled became impregnable with ten men.
