Hibernoz Hit Hard
Hwang Haste
The Birds all but got through to the next stage of the King of Football Club with their second group win, this against Western Australian IV.12 side Hibernoz. Spanish head coach Jorge Alberto Álvarez Areces put out a wide 3-5-2 with ambitions to unravel Grilled on the wings, and moreover had real quality in the form of forward Giorgio Araya, and senior midfielder Juan Val. Sadly for them, the Birds - and
Hwang Teck Fu in particular - took the initiative, which was altogether too much for the Aussies to recover from.
Araya had made short work of Meadow Pond three days ago, but there was just no time for him to insert himself into the conversation here, as Grilled's front three imposed themselves from kick-off. Hungarian sweeper Oleksii Pogorelov was something of a saviour for them as he manfully fended off Chitre and fellows, but there was no stopping the second wave; Hwang would bump opposing captain Rumen Kamenov away in a raw chase for
Chad Thach's wayward strike in the fifth minute, and he went on to scoop it over Márk Kelemen for the first goal.
Four minutes later, it was
Ha Qicai to put a second away as Hibernoz found no remedy to Grilled's suffocating advanced press, and their attempts to catch the Birds unawares didn't quite pan out either, as Russian striker Vladimir Erekaikin saw himself well-covered as their foremost man. It would be Thach to bring forth a third in the 26th minute after a stinging sidewinder from the right had Keleman scrambling, and the goalkeeper was not in any position to prevent Hwang from sending another past him, from a noteworthy overhead smash.
The Grilled Number Fifteen would have Rueben Wickham assigned to him personally at that, which did shut him down to an extent. Half-time came and went with relatively little notice, as
Tian Yonghang went for adventure by swapping
Chia Kwang Tse in for
Genki Nagano in central midfield. That might have allowed Terrance Terrett to feed Marcel Przypadek for a nice reducer in the 57th minute, but
Lim An Keng would thunder a volley right back at them anyway.
Lim was not quite done, and five minutes after that, he ran right through a slow-looking Hibernoz midfield to boom a fifth into the bottom corner, with Alessandro Consiglieri perhaps a bit unlucky with the touch that he got. Mel Attar would then be booked for getting handsy with
Darko Andrović, but the Hibernoz fans quickly forgot that as Terrett headed a great cross by Araya past
Radomil Marcol, in the 68th.
Chad Thach was then carded 75 minutes in for some bad acting in the box, though the Grilled support could afford to be amused at this point.
