Cazeux Overtime
The Birds' dominating victory gladdened
Eren Serpin to no end, as he regarded it as the ideal tune-up before travelling to Sarcastic Fringeheads. "That must be the hardest fixture on any local club's itinerary, bar themselves." Serpin commented. "We could use every bit of boost we can get, and we certainly got it. Ah Beng FC were excellently organized, in fact, but we were just better today."
Bernie Egan's strike also had him leading the Singapore Cup Golden Boot chart with nine goals, the same as Benfleet Branch 2's Romanian hitman Daniel Neamţiu, after he had a hat-trick in their 4-0 upset of II.2 club Crypto Moon. FC Tobi 74's Spanish veteran David Marcet is also on nine with his 64th minute wonderstrike, but that will be the extent of his count for this edition, after Tobi was knocked out by Arcturules.
Serpin backed Egan to gain the accolade, a feat that has been only achieved once by a Grilled player, the redoubtable Hall of Famer Maikel Rotteveel in Season 40, with 19 goals. "What's good for Bernie is good for the team, the way I see it." Serpin chuckled. "They're every bit natural scorers here."
Farmer Bunnies would have to huff and puff a lot more, as they were taken to extra time by Woodlands III.12 leaders, WNBN Architecture. The Cazeux took the lead through Coen Maris' exquisitely-placed 37th minute riser, and it took all of
Mushtag Al-Nameeri's wiles, to earn a penalty for
Vishnu Tallapaka to convert in the 57th minute.
Richard Agyei had to be replaced after entering as a second-half sub for
Namdar Zarar, and
Dalibor Kostadinović's decision to use his last substitution for
Ibrahim Zahran Al-Maashany in place of a poor
Nurlan Ablaev was thus a ballsy one.
It seemed to pan out, with Al-Maashany setting
Kwek Yun Jie up for what seemed a likely winner with six minutes remaining, but WNBN had a supersub saviour of them own, in the form of German forward Udo Hohenbrunn. Hohenbrunn's solid header forced the Buns to play on, and it took an Al-Nameeri solo down the right wing, to secure advancement.
Kostadinović looked on the bright side, lauding a steady if not spectacular debut from
Aitykul Zaripbekov, before confiming that Agyei's ankle concern was mild. "We just didn't want him to take additional risk on that." the head coach said. "The team went out there today, and did a job."
And faraway in Berlin, Grilled International thrashed Mean Penguines 5-0 on their own ground in the H.I. Sapphire Challenger Cup, with
Safari bin Hj Jali and
Tibor Atzenhain recording two each. This ended a run of three straight losses, and as
Wang Hanxuan acknowledged afterwards, they needed that.
