Birds Get The Poon
Gud Day Sir
Mayur Gudivada's stock continued on its unabated ascent as the 21 year-old put up a top-drawer display from start to finish in Grilled's fourth-round Cup tie against newly-formed Jurong club poonified. The young team, with an average age of just 24, had put away oldtimers 4everton and the rather more experienced Na'vi sticking to their philosophy of local talent, but the Birds' own fledglings were a step too far.
poonified were certainly not lacking in will, with their chosen starters all eager to leap into the fray, having gotten by previous challengers successfully that way. It would be a different story against a side trained to shift the ball, though, as the hosts realised in the eleventh minute with spirited defender Jeffrey Cheng committing himself too early against
Hung Wee Li. Luckily for him, Hung missed.
They were fortunate in that the rain made it hard for Grilled to advance as fluently as they would have liked, though, and rising starlet
Pompeo Bellamoli had the first stinker of his Grilled career, struggling to put a foot right. poonified clearly believed that they had a chance, and Gan Wee Wee's sacrifice of a booking to prevent a quick free-kick looked to be crucial as Steven Toh found a gap in the Birds' backline and nearly put his team in the lead.
That and the ongoing proceedings had assistant coach Luis Alcántara finally out on the sidelines, and his screaming while being drenched woke his previously slumbering charges up. They re-focused the focal point of their attacks into the middle, and this abrupt switch to an unabashedly direct style threw poonified's defence off.
Colby Awyong profited to the tune of an easy finish after a slip-up in the 32nd minute.
The goals flowed freely after Grilled got over that hump, and Gudivada dampened the home side's hopes further with an acrobatic volley three minutes later. Having found something that worked so well, the Birds continued piling it on in the middle, and raw physicality brought a couple more before the break as
Tang Hengcai and
Teo Yong Yau pushed two more over the line.
Alcántara appeared mollified by the dramatic turnaround, and ordered up more of the same to go. On their part, the hosts seemed to have accepted their fate, and kept to a more conservative approach, which however was undone by
Hung Wee Li's sharpshooting in the 55th minute. Naturalised citizen Hiroki Yanagida could only turn his head as Hung's strike flashed past.
Yanagida didn't have a particularly great day between the sticks, as although he might not have prevented Grilled's victory, the margin could conceivably have been rather tighter. Colby's second was an example of a preventable addition, as he jumped well to get to a
Paolo Iten corner, but wasn't able to get much power behind his header. It bounced in regardless.
The seventh and last would fall rightly to the clockwork-like Gudivada, who cleverly passed the by now over-concentrated poonified defence on the right to get in a free shot. The customary triple substitution followed before Grilled retired for the day.
