Jack Full House
Toma Time
Season Ninety ended with a 5-2 friendly result for Grilled Birds against Bahamas IV.19 visitors Freejack Rovers, in front of a round 2500 viewers at The Cooking Pot.
Hwang Teck Fu's unavailability had
Paulino Trindade given a rare go at left forward, with
Chad Thach shifted to right wing as
Aw Keng Chuan eased back into duties.
Toma Tamiya would then take the left - and to great effect, as it turned out.
Freejack might have just completed their first full season, but their head coach David Laroda had big plans for the club, as evidenced by their million-dollar spending spree towards the end of this season. Both their biggest buys, Polish fullback Ferdynand Szkopiak and Portuguese winger Carlos Gouveia Gomes, would be in Singapore today, if with Gomes staying on the bench. Rovers had a well-tuned 4-5-1 regardless, that built on Czech captain Ctibor Russ at sweeper, and revolved about young hometown hero Edward Colebrooke in midfield.
Grilled had home advantage on their side, it had to be recognized, and Spanish referee Albert Grasset played it up when he gave the Birds a penalty in the fifth minute.
Mohd Marzuki Khairul appeared a little puzzled himself given that he hadn't complained after Sugar Bohara's measured nudge in the back, but he was enough of a professional to roll with it with delayed applause.
Toma Tamiya stepped up to the spot as designated taker, and waited for Aussie goalkeeper Pitama Williams to move first, before rolling it into the now-vacated centre of the net.
Toma wasn't about to sit on that accomplishment either, and he would score again straight from the restart, as Grilled booted the attempted mass rush back upfield, and Trindade headed it on towards the winger's run. Freejack were much more circumspect on the next kick-off after Toma and Trindade's high-five, and they would nearly earn a reducer in the 21st minute on Colebrooke's powerful sprint, only for Rüdiger Straube not to be able to keep up.
Aw Keng Chuan instead had it at 3-0 a while later with his own convicted dribble, as he and
Mohsen El Khateeb missed open chances in the following minutes.
Dimitris Germanakos came off for
Dahan Bok at half-time as usual, and if truth be told, Dahan has an uphill battle if he wants to convince the fans that he is worthy of his place. The Birds had few issues going forward, with
Chia Kwang Tse sweeping an easy fourth goal home in the 52nd, but they looked shaky at the back especially after Freejack's triple substitution about the hour mark. Dahan's poor coordination of his defenders remained an obvious problem, and this led to José Regidor's successful strike in the 72nd minute, with both Hutter and El Khateeb expecting their goalkeeper to have come out to handle that.
That didn't matter for the overall outcome at least, and there would soon be a distraction with substitute forward Walther Zentai crunching into
Damian Hutter in his eagerness to steal the ball. This could easily have been a red had Grasset been of a mind to, but he decided to be lenient against the fans' protestations. Fortunately, their minds would soon have something new to entertain them once more, as home favourite
Lim An Keng held Russ off to make it 5-1 with a carefully-placed grounder.
This would be Grilled Birds' last goal of the season, with
Gandhik Chitre and
Mohd Marzuki Khairul trying but unable to win that honour.
Radovan Jaška and
Chan Ze Han entered right as the fourth official declared two minutes of added time, which was enough for Troy Gardiner to give his team a rousing send-off, by hacking the ball past Dahan amidst some goalmouth chaos.
