Pamp It Still
Joe Gets Going
The Birds would recover their status of having visited and hosted all Hattrick territories with today's hosting of Tahiti III.6 visitors FC Pamputetut Sillit, a spin-off of Finland's FC Tehoava Turska. Despite Pamputetut having just won their Division Four league, the difference in ability remained huge here, with Spanish boss Bogdan-Ionuţ Voic yet to break the S$700,000 mark for inbound transfers - and Suriname star signing Badar Kirono would not even be on the flight in today.
Voic would captain the side personally in midfield as he ordered up a 3-4-3 with Nicolas Béhague set up to counter
Federico Parada on the right, but that would not do much of anything, as Parada blasted past both Béhague and Heiva Tetuanui on his first dribble to score. This also left
Paulino Trindade mostly free on the other flank, and Trindade would make Pamputetut pay for the disrespect, by assisting
Evandro La Face for 2-0 in the ninth minute.
The next two minutes belonged wholly to
Joe Reece, who exemplified the poacher's arts with his goals; to begin with, he tracked La Face towards a
Chad Thach cross when most would have left it to the better-placed forward, only to profit once La Face could only clip the ball slightly. There would be more of the same as
Aw Keng Chuan's ferocious grounder wasn't held by goalkeeper Kawai Teura the very next minute, and Reece would elbow Kalani Teumere aside to get a foot in at just the right instant.
That made four, and with the outcome a foregone conclusion, Voic would have no qualms taking off the struggling Rino Miozzari, to give Nalu Temarii his chance up top. In truth, Temarii would see very little of the ball, much as Miozzari did, and the half would end with Grilled five up after
Evandro La Face put it between Teura's legs in the 25th minute, after an extended build-up inside the visitors' penalty area.
The second half began with Grilled's midfield getting their due, with
Lim An Keng and
Chad Thach making the most of some great deliveries from the right side, as Pamputetut stubbornly made marking
Federico Parada their top priority. The Birds would have their lows too, as when
Radovan Jaška went for a blatant dive two minutes after Thach's strike, with the defender hardly making a move on him. Curaçao referee Carlos Jurrjens - notably a domestic Challenger Cup winner with Midnight Makamba - was having none of that, and went straight for the yellow card.
This nonsense dealt with, Grilled Birds would fall back on proper footballing chops, which they should have all along.
Joe Reece would complete his deserved hat-trick in the 68th as he drove hard from the left corner of the six-yard box after a darting run, and then rocked the crossbar following
Teo Chuan Yong's entrance for an underutilised
Mohsen El Khateeb. La Face would then be booked for a messy challenge, before
Chad Thach made it nine and done.
