Bringing Down The House
Thach Of An Angel
With all four previous examples of this fixture over the last two seasons having seen at least nine goals, followers of both clubs were expecting no less at Aljunied Bridge - and were satisfied. Having pulled off wins at home in those matches, however, the Joker 9 fans would have to instead get used to the bitter taste of defeat today.
There would be no changes at all to the Joker eleven that had prevailed 6-3 here in November, with German goalkeeper Jens-Harald Schimmelpfennig long back in full health after twisting his left ankle then. Hong Kang Leong had gone and been replaced by
Raúl Himadas on the right side of defence for the Birds, and in addition to that,
Chad Thach would start on the left wing instead of
Paulino Trindade, as
Tian Yonghang aimed to exaggerate Grilled's midfield advantage. That failed as the Jokers shaded possession, but Thach would be the key to the Birds' victory nonetheless.
The teams would not wait overlong to conclude the formalities, and tore eagerly into each other from kick-off; the Jokers had been hard-pressed to find a win all season, with their clashes against Queenstown MZKs and newbies are newbies ending in draws, before losses in the previous two rounds against Claseek and Singapore Red Dragons. One found this hard to believe from how they cut Grilled's formation into ribbons at times, though, and Swiss wingman Mario Schumpbach would volley them into the lead in the eighth minute, as Chan Jian Jian swirled the ball back in after being herded wide by a double-team.
An explanation soon presented itself in the form of their own questionable defence, as
Mohd Marzuki Khairul drove a fifteen-yarder beyond Schimmelpfennig, on Grilled's very next attack. The Birds were then ahead before the hosts had the time to re-compose themselves, as
Brian Reddy leapt to take Vikas Satishchandra's too-casual backpass down. There would be more misery for the home fans as their team reeled from the sudden blows, and
Chia Kwang Tse made it 3-1 to the Birds in the 23rd minute, with Reddy outrunning Ariel Maceiras handily wide right.
As it turned out, the Jokers could score three in a row too, and they started with Mario Schumpbach's second, coming five minutes after Chia's. The wings were seeing the bulk of the action at this stage, and a pacy overlapping sprint from Aldis Cildermanis opened the entirety of Grilled's box to his cross.
Ha Qicai thought that Schumpbach had gotten a touch with his arm before his excellent header, but Hungarian referee Radúz Svorčík disagreed.
Hwang Teck Fu then got a delightful lob of his own off in the 35th minute, but it came back off the crossbar with Schimmelpfennig unable to backtrack promptly.
Joker 9's own one-two combination would arrive in the 51st minute, as they took control from the second-half restart. Ang Yi Da was pulling the strings effortlessly for long stretches then, and a carefully-weighted final ball saw Tay Fu Yew insert himself in the gap between
Aw Keng Chuan and
Raúl Himadas, with plenty of room to plot his finish. A minute later, much the same developments had Chan Jian Jian hold
Ha Qicai off as he raced onto Vibhav Singh's tantalizing slow-bouncing through ball, and the Number Nine toepoked it past
Dimitris Germanakos to get his team back in front!
The stands were back in full voice now, but Grilled were made of sterner stuff than that, and they would laboriously work themselves back into the game. A large part of this would be down to Chia sacrificing his offensive output to shut Ang down, which turned out to be a profitable exchange for the Birds.
Hwang Teck Fu would turn out to be more than capable of carrying the ball forward too - and so was
Gandhik Chitre, whose blitz past Avelino Franco to equalize in the 63rd minute was impressive, to say the least.
It was four-all with some twenty-odd minutes left, then, which surely caused some racing pulses as the teams continued their heedless assaults. For once, however, the Birds would be the ones to prevail at the Bridge, as Hwang sent it over the top with 70 minutes gone. Cildermanis looked to have claimed it, but
Chad Thach jumped in majestically, to catch the ball with the tip of his boot. Amazingly, he managed to retain sufficient control, and scrambled his shot past the goalkeeper before anybody else could cover.
That had Joker 9 throw themselves at the Grilled defence for the remainder of the contest, although by the time Thach went off for Trindade in the 89th minute, precious little had been achieved. It would instead be the Birds to nearly grab a sixth goal in stoppage time, after Ariel Maceiras tried too hard to bring the ball out of defence by himself.
Brian Reddy would hustle him off the ball, but Chia couldn't keep his finishing lob on target.