Badly Burnt
Aube Again
Djan Bacelar's pre-match premonitions proved prescient, as French fighters déchar turned out to be the very kind of team that the Birds didn't want to meet at this point in time. Despite that, Grilled could well yet have made it through, but
Clark Won's insane self-disqualification 26 minutes in set the odds too heavily against them.
There were few surprises in the lineups, with Grilled reintroducing
Low Aik Jia for some added bite, while pushing
Yuki Irie back into defence. déchar led off with Jean-Baptiste Aube heading their usual 5-4-1, with left winger Joey Lopez responsible for setting him up in the main.
Grilled set about the arduous task to laying siege to déchar's final third, which their opponents resisted with a savoir faire born of much practice. They were then dealt a stroke of luck, when Aube drove a careening blast into
Gene Filippone's arm. The penalty was given, and Paul Burgard calmly slotted it in at the bottom right corner after a short run-up.
Rinor Isufi came close to levelling five minutes later, when he sprinted inside to knock
Wong Ping Shun's inswinger marginally high. The Birds were slowly if surely getting into an attacking rhythm, and if nothing else were keeping déchar from getting another sniff at goal... and then disaster.
There hadn't even been anything going in between
Clark Won and Arnaud Fernandes, as far as could be discerned, when the Grilled midfielder shoved him over as they lined up for a high ball, right in front of the referee. Won seemed almost dumbfounded at himself as the ball comically fell on his downed adversary, but the referee didn't see it that way, and went for the straight red card.
There could have been a debate on whether a yellow would have been sufficient, but a dismissal was certainly not out of the realm of comprehension either, and anyway Won had only himself to blame.
Ang Leong Kum made a half-hearted attempt at a protest, while the rest of his teammates were tellingly uninterested in supporting it.
Being a man down again affected the Birds less than it might have been expected, and they were soon pegging déchar back once more. The goal they had been plugging away for would arrive from the left foot of
Wong Ping Shun in the 33rd minute, after the winger moved infield to fill the gap that Won had left. Frédéric Romet could possibly have done better for that one.
It was as good a recovery as Grilled could have hoped for, and it got better very soon. Isufi had another pop palmed aside by Samuel Martinet, but from the ensuing short corner, Wong would feed
Low Aik Jia, who fed
Mohd Safri bin Mohd Kassim breathtakingly accurately over twenty-five yards. Mohd Safri reciprocated with a tricky glancing header, that Martinet had no chance of getting across to.
With regular service restored, it was déchar's turn to get flustered. Julien Toulet had to engage in some gamesmanship to stop Low from restarting the game quickly, which got him booked. Taking the lead did cause Grilled the let their guard down, though, and Stéphane Jacquette nearly embarassed
Wong Tian Han with a leaping effort that was equal parts genius and bizarre.
Jacquette did get his goal, if in a far more conventional manner, right before half-time. The Birds were understandably eager to kill the match off while they had the initiative, but Grzegorz Rozpara read Mohd Safri's run only too well, and launched a sharp counter down the left after dispossessing him. Lopez got away from
Yuki Irie for long enough to center it, and Jacquette did the rest.
The implications of that were only too clear when déchar went on the offensive from the kick-off, and from their carefully-considered movements, Arnaud Fernandes would put them ahead once more, from Lopez's searching cross. It was only pure luck that Grilled didn't collapse to Burgard's wide-open strike three minutes later as their defence went AWOL, with the Frenchman unnecessarily cutting his finish too close.
Grilled would be thrown a lifeline immediately following that close shave, with
Low Aik Jia, so often Toulet's nemesis, lifting the ball into Toulet's hand in the middle of a dribble. Despite the victim's loud disavowals, referee Casper Crowder had little choice but to show a second yellow, after all that had happened. The free-kick was wasted, but that was little consolation to the departing fullback.
In a bid to provide that extra push, Grilled put
Ling Fuquan back on for
Yuki Irie, and if ever there was a sign that fortune was not on their side, this was it. As the exchange was being made, the referee blew to restart, and Jean-Baptiste Aube duly put déchar ahead 4-2 as Ling hustled ineffectually from the other flank. The Birds' prolonged arguments fell on deaf ears, as Crowder was intent on letting it stand.
Grilled would have to claw the deficit back on their own, and they managed to do just that right from the restart, with
Ang Leong Kum succeeding on his mazy advance from the centre circle. He somehow managed not to be picked up until Mohd Safri had gotten himself momentarily clear for a pass, which he cleaned up when it arrived.
The Birds were tiring fast, however, and with déchar willing to run the clock down at any available opportunity, it was clear that they had to rush. Ling, not renowned for his patience, kicked both the ball and Aube over the touchline in the 66th, to an indignant response from the gallery - and more importantly, yet more precious seconds ticking away.
Tian Yonghang tried his best to draw the opposition defence apart for that one all-important equaliser, but déchar knew well how to close a game out, and were not falling for that. They would use their substitutes intelligently to take another couple of minutes off the clock as full-time approached, and that was enough to take them through at the expense of the Birds.
