Rough Reunion
Kalki Just Goes On
It has been seven seasons since Ramseille Volliard FC first encountered - and did the double over - Grilled Birds in II.4, and after a season apart, the Birds have now joined the Rams back in Division Two. The gap between the duo as reflected by the scorelines had only widened, though, with
Kalki Parvathaneni making the most of his restoration to the forward line, with a hat-trick born of quite brilliant opportunism.
There were also various other milestones with this being
Moey Xin Seng's two hundredth start in the league for Grilled, which has him at fifth in the club's all-time stakes. He had captained the side out in the Birds' first meeting against Ramseille, a 1-3 home loss that coincidentally also had Kalki and Heng running the left side of attack; that was a bad day for Kalki, it should be remembered, as he had to retired in the 33rd minute after hurting his right knee.
Of that winning Rams side, six players would start today, including all three midfielders from then - Murathan Esinay, Sergio Sonino and Carl-Georg Reeperbahn. With the latter two already 38 years old all all three clearly some ways off their peaks, however, this has to be a squad sorely in need of reform. That said, they were in the S-League - if not as real challengers - but two seasons ago, and longstanding head coach Yeoh Wei Puay appears content with organizing his warriors into a more-defensive style, 21 years into his tenure.
Well, the Birds may be no spring chickens either, but it would soon be clear that time waits for none, and especially in football.
Bhavya Panigrahi and
Sølve Lunde would return to the starting XI as per the defensive rotation after being dropped last Sunday, and the former would take but three minutes to make his mark, slicing a brutal half-volley past Buffon and in off the crossbar. It was a start to wake The Cooking Pot up, even in the ongoing rainstorm.
Grilled might have suffered previously in such weather, but not today, as the ball moved a lot more cleanly than might be expected;
Heng Dong Chu threatened to make it two immediately after, and Buffon would have to keep his eye on the shot, as it skipped off the wet grass. The visitors then went fully in on the counter as they seized the opportunity, and Sergio Sonino came very close to duplicating Panigrahi's effort, as he whacked it off the bar too. Sadly for the Rams, all it brought Sonino in the end would be a yellow card, for shoving Lunde down in the chase for the rebound.
The situtation deteriorated rapidly for Ramseille, and they would be three down by the eighth minute. The pitch favoured the Birds in an extremely biased way for the day, and after it had Vasil Eliava slip at a critical moment on
Salah Kamel's approach, it then held Leopold Lõhmus up for a pivotal second against
Kalki Parvathaneni, with the Estonian seemingly having his studs stuck in the mud. That would bring a short stoppage as the Ramseille team busied themselves switching boots where available, a concession that Grilled were happy enough to allow.
That wouldn't change the visitors' fortunes, unfortunately for them, with their 5-4-1 defence perhaps offering numbers at the back, but not much else. Its staticness had been noted in their recent losses to SingaStyle, the Ang Mohs and even Blacksail Team, and it was definitely not proof against a motivated
Kalki Parvathaneni. Starting in a more advanced position that he had become used to, the Number Ten found himself in a ready-made shooting position far more often than before, and he evinced few qualms at pulling the trigger. Just as well, from his pinpoint finish for Grilled's fourth, in the eighteenth minute.
The match would then grow quieter for a long while as the storm increased in intensity, with some fears from the home fans that the match might have to be abandoned. It never got that bad, thankfully for them, and more-normal service would be resumed, as the skies cleared somewhat during the break. Ramseille's Pierre-Yves Robert fired the first salvo of the second half, with an impressive charge from deep in the 52nd minute, but it would be turned just wide by
Jānis Salmiņš.
The Birds continued their positive if cautious approach, which turned out to be more than sufficient for them to extend their lead. Seven minutes after Robert's attempt,
Bhavya Panigrahi would make another breakthrough, as he found himself in prime position to dribble after his initial free-kick came back off the wall. His strike from open play would be far superior to that initial take, helped maybe by a slight touch from a defender. 5-0.
One could hardly fault Ramseille for being a bit down by this stage, though they did keep steeling themselves against Grilled's depredations, which were fairly routine by now. Still, Kalki wouldn't pass up on collecting the twelfth hat-trick of his career, and might even have made it four, had his blind strike gone slightly more to the left in the 83rd minute. The supporters were definitely appreciative, from how they kept on singing about the oft-underappreciated Number Ten, long after the final whistle.
