Wander's End
First Hat-tricks
Two Grilled players recorded their first professional hat-tricks in the third round of the Singapore Cup, as midfielder
Lee Jie Siong and defender
Sylweriusz Zywczyn netted the second through seventh goals against amateurs Balestier Wanderers, who nevertheless must count it as an achievement to have made it this far, beating out Division Three Yanzi United last week.
While Yanzi United had fielded an uncommonly weak side, Grilled were nowhere near that charitable and peppered their starting eleven with three first-teamers and a number of fringe men. One of those was
Dani Spirig, probably fifth in the midfield pecking order now and anxious to get his big break. He put in his application by twisting clear of Mohd Ramzi bin Daud in the sixth minute and lashing in the opener.
Bukhari Abd Hamid in contrast revealed his immaturity as he mixed lapses in composure with his usual clarity of passing. Under little pressure, he cut back to Bona, only to discover Bona had moved up some twenty metres from his last seen position. Automobile dealer Mi Chong-Teck accelerated in, but didn't pack much power and Bao-Tam made a comfortable save.
Hopes of dragging it out were dashed when
Lee Jie Siong stayed upright despite being battered left and right by the Wanderers' determined defenders, and bent a lob to the outside of ZhangCai Quyny in the 25th minute. Worse, they just had winger Zhong Shin-ichi sent off for clattering into
Dragos Olaru, which meant they would be one man short for the rest of the match.
Sid and Lee then made it 0-4 with twin long-range efforts that flew past a bemused Quyny in the Wanderers' goal, and it became merely a question of how many the visitors would score. Fredgård was still out of sorts, though, and he gave up a yellow card when he hauled down last round's goal hero Guan Vinh-Phat.
Hjortlind was struck by Grilled's recent curse of the strikers when his perfectly good attempt was acrobatically fisted away by the rotound 43 year-old cook, ZhangCai Quyny. Midfielders were clearly under no such limitation, as Jie Siong flitted through the home team's defence and elegantly sidefooted his third goal soon after.
Sid was a bundle of energy as he linked up play from defence to attack, and when Martinsson chose the 78th minute to wow the crowd with a no-look backflick, Sid was on the receiving end and tapped it under the onrushing Quyny. Six minutes later, when through on a one-on-one, Sid confirmed his own hat-trick by pulling Quyny hopelessly out of position.
The final goal was made by Borup, who was limping slightly from Au-Yong Ah-Cy's badly timed challenge. He was still nimble enough to get past two defenders with the faintest of feints, and Martinsson barely beat the offside trap to make a late contribution for Grilled's misfiring forward line.
