A Kick In Seven
No More Nil
Seventh-placed KickzFC could not relive their shock early-season draw at The Cooking Pot, and were duly relegated after Grilled Birds' 7-0 lesson applied at their East Coast home. Given that they had lost all their matches here excepting a 1-1 against already-down MyTeamName - which notably gave them what is likely their only point of the season - this outcome was not entirely unexpected.
The Birds would not slack off too much as they fielded what was mostly their first team, if with
Hwang Teck Fu making a somewhat-rare league start, alongside
Lim An Keng and
Mohd Marzuki Khairul. This would be more than enough to take KickzFC's 5-2-3 apart, if slowly, as the hosts would successfully frustrate Grilled's advances for the first half an hour. Their dogged defence would yield only one clear chance for the Birds in that period, which was
Federico Parada's speculative lob after making it several yards into the box, which would be tipped over by want-away Senegalese goalkeeper Younouss Diouf.
Diouf had evidently become disillusioned with his club's lack of improvement over the course of the year, and just why would be shown soon, as
Joe Reece claimed the all-important opener sweeping it in from five metres, after a massed Grilled push forward.
Orest Tokarz's bungled effort in the next minute would then give KickzFC their own opportunity, but Eugénio Sertório would slip it past
Dimitris Germanakos and lightly off the post, with his attempted follow-up coming a second too late.
There would then be a short pause for Polish defender Jerzy Rudobrody to get his ankle looked it, having twisted it in creating the initial breakout. The restart would not be kind for KickzFC, unfortunately for them, as they could not gather their concentration against a persistent Grilled team in time.
Enrique Baena shot hard and true from the right side in the 38th minute, and
Mohd Marzuki Khairul would be there when Zdeněk Peloušek turned the wrong way, for 3-0 at the break.
Saul Turcin would have his players back in their positions and filled with a mission for the first twenty minutes of the second half at least, with Swedish veteran Per Eckby off after fifteen minutes for the even-more-senior Abel Gualter. Alas, none of that accumulated experience would be sufficient against
Phua Ming Xin's strength and acceleration in the 67th, and the penalty awarded for the required foul to stop him would be put past Diouf by
Federico Parada very calmly indeed.
Sertório would then be off for Ignacio Estrázulas on the wing despite the game looking well out of reach for KickzFC already, and indeed Estrázulas' first act upon arriving would be as a part of the defensive wall, that would stand mutely against Parada's dipping strike over it for Grilled's fifth.
Tian Yonghang would finally dip into his reserves with ten minutes left, and three minutes after
Chan Ze Han came on, he would feed
Phua Ming Xin his tenth league goal of a very decent debut season.
Orest Tokarz then got the goal he well deserved as the home side got pinned back in their own final third, and Chan was close to getting one for himself too, which would have been an incredible return for the time he was on. Diouf demonstrated his value with a wonderful reaction stop off Chan's sharp header, though, and Zdeněk Peloušek was close to finding a late consolation at the other end, but
Dimitris Germanakos intervened.
