Turned Up To Eleven
Raúl Riches
That this 21st match against Joker 9 returned eleven goals was perhaps not too outlandish, given that the past seven meetings over the last four years had brought at least six each. Of those, this probably resembled Grilled's 8-4 win here two seasons ago the most, with that game remembered for a nifty
Paulino Trindade hat-trick. There would be another standout today, however, alongside a couple of firsts.
The mild weather attracted almost ninety thousand to The Cooking Pot, which was by some distance the largest attendance for the club this term, far outstripping the 67000-odd who came for Singapore Red Dragons in the third week. The undisputed kings of Geylang were arriving off a big win over West Merlions, marked by the explosive return of former trainee Tairiku Kobayashi from Romania. The 22 year-old playmaker would feature again alongside former academy pals Vikas Satishchandra and Au Chun Jun, as young Uruguay boss Ariel Maceiras went all-out with a wide 3-5-2.
This was a fixture famous for starting off with a bang, and today was no different with Grilled reverting to more or less their usual setup with
Brian Reddy back on the right. The former national youth wingman looked well-rested from his enforced layoff, and stumped Portuguese fullback Avelino Franco with the kind of wild rush that one would have expected from a newbie half his age. It went through for all that, and a sweet volley by
Mohd Marzuki Khairul meant that the Birds were ahead after just two minutes!
That brought some grumbling by some of the later-arriving spectators, a good fraction of whom were still stuck at the turnstiles due to the near-capacity crowd. The technical staff would rectify that by replaying the goal during breaks in play, not that there were that many of those from how the game proceeded. It was nearly non-stop attacking from the encouraged Birds, and
Darko Andrović would finally open his account proper on his sixth appearance, as he threaded a shot between Jens-Harald Schimmelpfennig's legs as Reddy carved the right side up once more in the 15th minute.
Joker 9 would stem the tide a little here, but it looked seriously bad for them half an hour in, when
Raúl Himadas bent a free-kick over the wall for 3-0. Concerns of a rout would soon be shown to be overblown, though, as the Jokers' golden pair of Tay Fu Yew and Chan Jian Jian combined for some defiance two minutes later. Chan sallied past
Ha Qicai with disconcerting ease after Andrović got caught on the offence, and Tay's lob with forespin cleared
Radomil Marcol before dipping under the crossbar.
The 26 year-old Tay was not done yet, and he would live up to his nickname of "
Lucky", as he basically stumbled onto Hans-Ulrich Rehn's low cross from the left in the 39th minute - and knocked it past Marcol.
Hwang Teck Fu and Vikas Satishchandra had both threatened to score in the several minutes before that, but it was ultimately Rehn who equalized from a solid header off a deep Mario Schumpbach cross.
It ended tied three-all at half-time in a distressingly typical development for this fixture, after
Chad Thach swept a late Reddy pass inches wide on Grilled's response. There was thus no lack of highlight reel material for the titantron through the fifteen-minute break... which was itself merely a lead-in to the real story of the day.
That was, of course,
Raúl Himadas, and while the 31 year-old Spanish defender might have his limitations, expectations have seldom been as high at dead ball situations in club history. While
Genki Nagano and
Brian Reddy both stood over the ball along with Himadas in the 48th minute, there was frankly no doubt as to who would actually take the kick. Indeed, Schimmelpfennig knew what was coming when Genki hopped over following a short run-up, but that didn't prevent Himadas from slamming it home off the post, after grazing Au Chun Jun on the outside of the defensive wall.
Himadas wasn't slowing down, and he would soon remind that he owed a great left foot too, as he crashed his hat-trick goal into the net from outside the box, courtesy of a
Lim An Keng assist. 5-3 it was, and it would soon be six as
Genki Nagano climbed over a battling Vikas Satishchandra to tip a header over the line. That was the Number Two's maiden goal for Grilled Birds, and he made sure to thank
Hwang Teck Fu for the delivery.
The fans were really getting into the spirit now, but the home contingent's cries for more goals backfired on them somewhat, as
Chad Thach was again unlucky with his 68th minute bullet header. That saw it returned to the Grilled end in seconds, from which Rehn strucked again from a corner.
Tian Yonghang withdrew Himadas and Andrović in the 89th minute to a standing ovation... which soon felt awkward with Tairiku Kobayashi rushing a fifth goal in for the Jokers. Fortunately, the Birds would get through the four minutes of added time with no further issues.
