Without Quarter
Phua Presence
Grilled Birds successfully navigated the second round of the Singapore Cup by defeating III.13 participants Blacksail Team, 3-1. This was perhaps less of an accomplishment than it would otherwise have been, since Blacksail had just entered administration after prolonged management issues, and had just been swept 6-0 by JR Football Club in the league. They would retain the services of some of their squad for now, granted, and with players on the level of Constantin Schwalbennest, Tobias Prodinger and Víctor Gómez de Avellaneda, they retained sufficient talent to worry the Birds, in theory at least.
On the field, however, such expectations would peter out pretty quickly, not helped by the ground advantage that the Birds had, with just over forty-seven thousand having bought tickets for this rare home cup fixture. Former national youth star
Phua Ming Xin had fallen some way down the forward pecking order, and he would throw himself into the game with abandon, catching the eye with a spectacular third minute volley that could well have taken Bulgarian custodian Georgi Koychev unawares, had it been a yard lower. Phua did not have to dwell on the miss, as he tried again with a disguised chip two minutes later, and saw it come off Květoslav Šrám's shin at an unexpected angle to drop past the goalie.
If Grilled were orchestrating the game in midfield, their defence remained mostly an afterthought with
Tian Yonghang gambling on saving his first-teamers, and this gave the Blacksails justified hope to grab and equalizer when the stars aligned. The elements came together in the 19th minute as
Paulino Trindade lost Sjerk De Bock, and
Mohsen El Khateeb displayed a rather poor reading of the game in advancing early on the winger. That left an obvious in to Tobias Prodinger, who had all the time he needed to steady himself, before pummeling the ball past
Cameron Law.
Blacksail were not doing too badly on the backfoot either, and the first half would yield but a single additional shot on target for Grilled, via
Hwang Teck Fu's 26th minute raking drive that had Koychev throwing himself at it. They would promptly go ahead again after Mohsen was replaced by
Teo Chuan Yong to start the next forty-five minutes, with
Orest Tokarz expertly fending off De Avellaneda, as he made his way towards
Aw Keng Chuan's floated ball down the middle. There remained but a small window of opportunity as the defenders encroached, but Tokarz found the target for a reassuring 2-1 to the Birds.
Aw would have his own moment after 53 minutes as Grilled parked themselves about the Blacksail penalty area, and although Phua was heavily marked, his timely pass back outside would find Aw with room to think... and smash a left-footed effort off the crossbar. Tokarz couldn't battle his way to the rebound in time, but it would soon be 3-1 Grilled anyway, as
Gandhik Chitre punished Šrám for not looking where he turned.
The visitors would have even more of an uphill battle, as their massed charge from the restart had Spanish striker Moisés Romano flattened by
Radovan Jaška, which would have been less of a loss had they brought any substitutes at all. Instead, Jaška would escape with a yellow card, Blacksail Team had to continue with a forward down just when they needed one the most, as Constantin Schwalbennest sent the resulting free-kick well over after a long wait.
There should be no question as to why Blacksail Team could not muster a proper response after that, and the Birds would be content to see the remainder of the time out with a minimum of fuss too, with old warhorses
Bhavya Panigrahi and
Chan Ze Han making cameos to loud appreciation.
