Fifties Comedy
Chia Chad Charm
This would be the fifth straight season that Grilled Birds have had to contend with Joker 9 in the league, which has resulted in five wins for the Birds and three for the Jokers thus far. More than that, six of those games have churned out nine or more goals for the fans, so it was probably not the biggest jolt to have it happen again.
A
Raúl Himadas hat-trick had decided the last edition 6-5 in Grilled's favour, but Joker 9 had their big guns all in attendance too, as they brought an unchanged squad to The Cooking Pot. Tian would return
Aw Keng Chuan to centre mid and
Paulino Trindade to left wing, with
Genki Nagano and
Darko Andrović having the day off. This felt a little off to some fans, but from how the duo took to the match, they would soon have to concede that Tian knew his stuff.
With zero expectation that either goalkeeper would maintain a clean sheet for long, the players all felt free to attack from the word go, which appeared to have Czech referee Vojtěch Volák taken aback for abit. He would get with the flow soon enough, and was soon happily whistling away about the ninth minute, after
Chia Kwang Tse and Tay Fu Yew crashed powerful strikes home within seconds of each other.
Radomil Marcol could perhaps have positioned himself better for Tay's effort, but the supporters weren't about to spoil the mood yet.
The question of which team would pull away - if ever - very much remained, and there would be an answer by the midway point of the half. The Jokers remained dangerous in spurts as when German veteran Hans-Ulrich Rehn mounted
Raúl Himadas to glance a header inches wide in the 17th minute, but that was only followed by Chia unleashing a banger for 2-1. Two minutes later, it was
Chad Thach to get the third as Jens-Harald Schimmelpfennig fell to the wrong side no thanks to it coming off Vikas Satishchandra, and
Gandhik Chitre made it four after 26 minutes with a striker's instinct on Thach's arrested dribble.
The Jokers had seen it all, however, and simply being three down wasn't enough to douse their fighting spirit - not that they had an alternate gameplan anyhow. They were definitely not afraid to get physical when it mattered, and the game wasn't stopped when Tairiku Kobayashi backed harshly into
Mohd Marzuki Khairul in the 33rd minute, flattening the Grilled midfielder. Aw would regret yelling at an unmoved Volák as Chan Jian Jian danced away down the right flank, and Au Chun Jun would clip it past Marcol despite
Ha Qicai's presence.
Still, Grilled appeared to have done enough to win it already, and they would be confident enough to start holding it up for the next half.
Chia Kwang Tse remained focused on his first senior hat-trick, but would be denied by the barest of margins after his incredible right-footed stunner clanged off the crossbar in the 62nd minute, having well beaten Schimmelpfennig. Seven minutes later, a penalty would be awarded for a late hack at
Lim An Keng's knees by a wrongfooted Aldis Cildermanis, and
Raúl Himadas brooked no opposition with a delayed blast high up the middle for 5-2!
One can always count on Joker 9 to keep things interesting, though, and the lead was back to two goals in the blink of an eye, as Chan Jian Jian completely outfoxed Trindade - and then Marcol - segueing in from the right. It then got extremely interesting as Chan plundered another from Mario Schumpbach's slide-rule assist in the first minute of injury time, but Marzuki milked Schumpbach's following tackle for all it was worth... which was enough.
