Imperious Roundup
Hwang Hunger
Reigning Player of the Season
Hwang Teck Fu did not take his foot off the pedal with a hat-trick to start off the new season, as semi-pro side Dubioza Kolektiv Football Project 2018 let in eight goals in their Singapore Cup return, after an absence of two years. The IV.20 members had survived as a passion project of current manager Kok Tian Su, but his mix of passionate amateurs and the odd grant-holder were simply not about to cut it against the Birds.
This Grilled team moreover had
Chia Kwang Tse and
Lim An Keng starting alongside Hwang, and
Hisham Zubari returning from his minor chest injury in central midfield. 27 year-old bookkeeper Shankar Chowdary had pledged to do his best captaining the Kolektiv in goal, but reality would impose itself soon enough. Army regular sergent-major Yeoh Boon Wan tried his best, but
Ananda Hettiarachchi eased past him in the sixteenth minute, and released a cutting low pass that
Lim An Keng only had to sweep past Chowdary from four yards.
Dubioza kept the press up despite the setback, and although they never quite looked like getting polytechnic star forward Chia Rong Tse in an actually dangerous position, they did hold Grilled's advances off through the half-hour mark, with social sciences undergraduate Neo Ting Yew even baiting Zubari into a late tackle - and booking - in the 31st minute. Zubari had the last laugh then, however, as the Kolektiv gambled and lost in pushing men up to contest the free-kick, which left
Mohd Marzuki Khairul to make it 2-0 on the return.
That broke the hosts' formerly ironclad resolve, and they would be at sixes and sevens on Grilled's next advance. The initial free-kick from
Genki Nagano would be shielded back to Chowdary, but there was then a complete misunderstanding as the goalie tried to get a counterattack going, and
Wu Ping De stole it and stuck it into the net. Ananda assisted Chia in the very next minute for the fourth, and 33 year-old left forward Chong Kiong Chu tried to appeal to Mongolian referee Batjargal Ghazan on apparent contact with
Johann Schwietzer in the 41st minute, only to be yellow carded for simulation.
Chong could afford to grin and bear it as the sides trooped off for the break, with the atmosphere remaining comfortably casual what with Dubioza Kolektiv never being expected to make it through. The second half restarted with the hosts now committed to defence, which did bring its own set of challenges - one of them being the long shot from outside the penalty area, which
Chia Kwang Tse happily demonstrated 52 minutes in for 5-0.
Grilled Birds eased off a little after that, but
Hwang Teck Fu never seemed satisfied at not having scored, for which his time would come. This began inauspiciously enough in the 77th minute, as he tried to fight his way to the loose ball after Chowdary had blocked
Lim An Keng's initial strike from wide left, only to be booked for shoving Anwar Abdul Aziz over. It was second time lucky when
Mohd Marzuki Khairul pulled his attempt across goal in the next minute, as he stuck a boot in legally this time.
The hosts were unhappy about Hwang's unabashedly physical approach, but he would be probably the last one to care about that opinion, as he threw his weight about to shoulder-barge Neo off the ball in the confusion following a free-kick, to finish a second off. Hwang then went the more traditional route with a run and lob after 82 minutes, for the hat-trick.
