Wat A Drubbing
Orama Drama
A seven-nil wipeout against reigning Jamaican national cupholders WADOATOC was perhaps not out of the norm, but what really made it smart was that the Premier League hosts played most of the game with ten men. Target man Christian Brenneis might have set them on their merry way, but for creating a buzz, there was no unseating Swedish international playmaker Orama Hermiz.
With their defensive 4-5-1, WADOATOC were not leaving any openings for Grilled, whose starting strikeforce of
Pompeo Bellamoli and
Mohammad Ramli Saliman had never been especially prolific anyway. Not that that mattered either, as they teased the Birds with the ball in an all too relaxed manner. Seven minutes in, Greek Pantelakis Lamarinas - playing winger instead of forward - burnt
Hoàng Trung Quá for pace, and left Brenneis with an easy conversion at the far post.
WADOATOC were steamrolling their way here, and despite Grilled's lockdown, they conceded again in the 22nd minute, with it falling to Jason Ledeatt after another foray down the left. Lamarinas was having an exceptional day, and he would do a repeat of the opener ten minutes later, with
Dan Seng taken out by an inch-perfect cross.
Lost in the shuffle there was Hermiz going down after running blind into
Rashid bin Ahmad, which appeared to have affected the Swede. The normally level-headed midfielder would hurl himself recklessly at Bellamoli right from the restart, though in his defence, his limp had thrown his stride off. Referee Allan Kriesler was having none of that, and reached directly for the yellow card.
That failed to curb Orama's increasingly-erratic behaviour, however, and it was hard to overlook his overblown aggression; player-coach and fellow former Swedish national teamer Thomas Mathiasson appeared to be debating whether to pull him off, but the choice was taken for him, after an inexcusable dangerous high leg in on
Kalki Parvathaneni, who narrowly escaped having his face raked.
Now a man down, WATOATOC were nevertheless coping handily, and they even went further ahead almost immediately. It was hard to tell what
Hilal Bakhtiar was thinking, as he hit the free-kick closer to Moritz Mitterhuber than
Dante Tran, and the German winger duly tore through to squeeze a grounder past Seng.
There were some entertaining moments from
Pompeo Bellamoli towards the final few minutes, and some smooth moves even allowed him to trick his way behind Kıraç Mekki for a moment or two. Unfortunately, nobody had followed him up on that, and Mekki recovered.
Mekki would make it 5-0 seven minutes after the restart from a free-kick, and there was no blaming
Dan Seng, or the Grilled defensive wall, for that one. Mekki had simply struck it too perfectly, and Seng could only watched as the shot cleared the wall handily, before plunging right into the opposite side of goal.
That said, WADOATOC's dominance was fading a little as the man disadvantage stretched them, and they had to spend more time on the back foot.
Mohammad Ramli Saliman was beginning to get into it too, but the hosts' solidity won out in the end. 61 minutes in, they would further increase their lead, with former youth international Carlton Vernon springing the offside trap.
WADOATOC were beginning to wind it down by this stage of the game, with Vernon and Marko Montonen having been absolute giants in protecting their back four. There would be time enough for one last strike, but it was more down to poor reading by
Remco van der Ban, than any creativity on the hosts' side. Pantelakis Lamarinas wasn't picky, though, and stabbed the miscontrolled ball past a stranded
Dan Seng anyway.
Grilled made a triple substitution in the 85th, with
Sandy Fu,
Colby Awyong and
Mohd Jafni Abdul Majid relieving their well-beaten compatriots, but they certainly weren't going to pull anything out here either.
