Font Of Goals
Brace Of Braces
Exactly twenty seasons to the day that Grilled travelled to Nairobi and outlasted multiple-time champions wanafunzi 2-3 in extra time, they welcomed Division Two visitors F.C. Delafonte to The Cooking Pot to complete the Kenyan connection. The African side in patterned yellow-and-white with black shorts defended grimly in a standard 4-4-2, but could not hold Grilled's slowly-improving reserves.
In a sea change from the scorching hot weather that saw the first team pull off an improbable victory against newbies are newbies just three days before, The Cooking Pot was drenched in rain for the friendly, which meant that the only slickness the participants were going to be able to display would be on their apparel, as Isaac Bailey found to his chagrin. The normally silky smooth dribbler was reduced to kick-and-run tactics on the waterlogged grass.
Neo Da Teck, who usually has a penchant for deft touches too, adapted his game quickly this time, and gave up deception for straightforward lumping of the ball. This worked out wonderfully in the eleventh minute, with his blind hit spinning off New Zealander goalie Gordie Umaga's waist and in at the near post.
Li Boon Boon began to show signs of overwork as he struggled to maintain his energy levels under the challenging conditions, nearly giving away a penalty before having the wind knocked out of him by a hard fall. The coach allowed him to get it on until half-time before wisely resting him for
Aden Abu-Abdel, who got his second substitute appearance.
Grilled were three to the good by then, with
Tang Hengcai not even noticing the pelting rain as he used his size to force his way through before stunning spectators with a hammer strike. It was turning out to be a bad day at the office for Umaga, who lost his footing coming out to meet Neo as Grilled returned the kickoff immediately. Neo wasn't about to be charitable, and slotted into the empty net.
Other than Abu-Abdel,
Paolo Iten and
Seytek Djekshenkulov made their entrances at the start of the second half, but it was Delafonte who got off running.
Tang Hengcai's optimistic wild attempt from range was put back deep into the Grilled half, and Panya Wakihuri smartly took a quick free-kick, allowing Matata Chepkwony to outrace the Birds' backline and make it 3-1.
The added infusion of midfield know-how would translate soon enough into overwhelming possession for the home team, and thence into goals;
Mayur Gudivada, who had found the net late against rubin_kazan, repeated the trick by arriving bang on time to knock in a defence-splitting diagonal pass by Djekshenkulov. Gudivada's contributions were not over, as he dropped in a good corner kick two minutes later, and Tang's forehead did the rest.
Hilal Bakhtiar was then booked for an unconvincing dive, and
Aden Abu-Abdel was unfortunately denied his first professional goal by a magnificent stop from Umaga, but all this didn't detract from the fact that Grilled had won handily by then.
