Cheesed Off
Back Hits Winner
Grilled ended the season with a bang as a late free-kick conversion by
Erik Back sealed the win in an exciting encounter with CharlesCheesePie, which meant that the Birds have taken at least three points from each of their league opponents in this campaign.
CharlesCheesePie, who had wiped the floor with Grilled at The Cooking Pot in one of the Birds' most embarassing opening days, again played a 4-5-1 with emphasis on controlling possession. The two sides were largely unchanged from that meeting, though the hosts began the day three places below Grilled, an unlikely situation had the two clubs carried on with their form.
As it was, CharlesCheesePie were clearly saving something for their crucial qualifier next weekend, and set up to hit Grilled on the break; all went according to script in the early part of the first half as they continually frustrated Grilled's forwards, and they even went ahead through 33 year-old Hungarian winger Medárd Visky, whose whipped cross-cum-shot was uncharacteristically let in by
Valdir Dias Paes.
Grilled's players dusted themselves off, and evened it all up after barely three minutes.
Chow Ying Lee was the main architect, as he shook off a forgettable U-20 outing against Oceania, which saw him booked for the same foul as teammate Mohd Safri in a strange incident. Chow blazed past a static CharlesCheesePie central defence, and unselfishly laid it off for
Domenik Bögengang to touch it in.
What followed was several minutes of fast and frantic attacking by the visitors, and equally hurried defending by the home side; after an attempted run by
Erik Back had been blocked off, he cleverly reversed it for
Yvan Lefébure to carry on. The French midfielder was about to put his boot through the ball, only for CharlesCheesePie goalie Bernie Vollaers to bat it away at the last possible moment.
It took Wong Chang De's hard but understandable professional foul on
Vukota Crkvenjakov to dampen Grilled's offensive intensity, and the yellow card he got was probably worth the minute or so he earned to allow his team to recover and regroup.
CharlesCheesePie followed the same gameplan for the second half, but were forced into taking the initiative after
Chow Ying Lee chipped Vollaers from out of the blue.
Han Lik-Tsun saw the goal as a good opportunity to withdraw the struggling Vukota, who didn't quite manage to run off his injury, and give
Niculae Stanca his competitive debut.
Stanca took his time fitting in, though, and nearly became responsible for CharlesCheesePie's equaliser when he allowed Damian Gustavo Barilari an unblocked shot. Valdir caught that, luckily, but couldn't get across his goalmouth quickly enough when Haji bin Yusop thundered home a header at the far post from Deng Aik Leng's high cross.
News had filtered in that seluraralc were leading newbies 3-5 in their concurrent match, meaning that victory would be worth a cool S$450 000 if seluraralc went on to win. That was likely not foremost in
Erik Back's mind when Mohd Safri got his head to an indirect free-kick floated into the box, but the Luxembourg midfielder nevertheless eluded Schmidt's attentions to clip it into the bottom corner.
There were a couple of late exchanges as Visky threatened to spoil Grilled's party with an eyebrow-raising effort that brushed the post, while Chow, undoubted Grilled's star performer for the match, nearly provided a facsimile of his first assist, but none which impacted the final score as the Birds held on.
