DBFC are on the verge of winning the Divison 1 Title after beating J-Leaguers, their closest challengers, to open a 9 points gap with 5 games remaining. At the bottom of the table, the relegation battle is heating up after wins for the bottom 3 teams to drag the bottom five teams into a potential fight for survival.
Division 2 moved into the first weekend of March with 4 teams all in with a realistic chance of promotion to the top flight. Despite San Pells and Mes both threatening to run away with the league at different points of the season, they have not yet been able to shake off the in-form Revolution (13 wins in 14 games) and a technically classy KCC Cavs for whom defeat against their club rivals last time out has made the task that bit tougher. The top two had the chance to lay down a marker with both playing early on Saturday whilst Revo and Cavs would face off against each other in a huge game on Monday night.
Mes certainly took advantage of this opportunity in their game against Old Speckled Men. Helped by the fact that their opponents had to kick off with just 8 men (unsure if they were old and speckled), and only managed to reach a quota of 9, the current league leaders were ruthless as they romped to a 5-0 win. Massie Kallon and Rob Barratt scored twice each with Liam Kelly also on target. Of all the games to be short of numbers for OSM this would probably be last on the list and those that were there did well to keep the score down to a semi-respectable level.
San Pells didn’t have it quite so easy against a much improved Wolves side. Following a 5-0 drubbing last week, Wolves responded well to push a strong side all the way this time out, eventually going down 3-2. End to end stuff at Happy Valley, even managing to draw in a few spectators where Wolves were ever-dangerous on the break and San Pells delivered consistent quality from set pieces. Austin Tenny (2) and Charlie Clack were the heroes for Pells with Jacques Smit and Victor Johansson bagging for the unlucky Wolves.
Royals and Dragon Valley came into their game on Monday looking to build on their respective impressive results last time out. DV had held Mes to a 2-2 draw and knew they would need to be equally as impressive to get anything against a strong Royals team. The KCC side had seen off Cavs 3-1 a week ago and they were able to repeat the trick here as Luca Merlone, Sam Wolstenholme and an OG helped them to another 3 points. An unusually short match report from DV (due to lack of gaffer presence/Saturday beers) simply stating their goal was scored was Jav.
The ‘spring showers’ (read pissing it down) provided the backdrop for Cavs struggles as the side sitting in 4th had their promotion hopes drowned by a slick Revolution FC on Monday night. In an even first half, Revo edged ahead with a goal fitting of the conditions – a deep free-kick was met with the same ferocity as the weather from the giant German forehead of Tim Rechter. With the downpour becoming heavier in the second period the floodgates opened as Revo whipped up a perfect storm at Kings Park. Jamie Kelly ran through to make it 2-0 before turning provider just 2 minutes later; showing tremendous tenacity and balance to keep the ball in play and pick out a perfect dink for Matt Creighton to head in. Tim Rechter then thundered home a volley for number 4 before Kelly brought further clouds over Cavs evening with another neat finish. Back to back 5-0 wins leaving Revo manager Snelly soggy but satisfied.
At the top of Division 3 Shui Wei set the tone with a frankly ridiculous 9-0 win over Legal Head. Niko Nitti (4) Tristan Massart (3), Daniel Irwin and Marin Magre all gave Head a real spanking. Maybe not surprising that there was no match report detail from either side on this one.
This put the pressure on Samurai Blue to respond in their game against BOC, which they duly did with a 3-0 win. Whilst the result itself was perhaps not a big surprise, there were shockwaves sent through the world of WhatsApp with an unexpectedly short match report from Sam Blue to digest. Ahmed Jemli (2) and Ravi Sukhwani were able to find a way past the hugely impressive BOC keeper with the defeated side admitting that the Blues wingers were just too good on the day.
Vikings are the 3rd side in the mix for the title and they came up against the ‘Bag of Revels’ Young Guns, admitting that their opponents were a ‘big mouthful’ on this occasion…But enough off-pitch matters and on to the game. Samson Wong had given Vikings the lead as he ran on to a lofted through ball to finish with a cheeky chip over the onrushing keeper. Not to be outdone by his namesake, Young Guns managed to grab an equalizer through Justin Wong who capitalized on Vikings failure to clear the ball but can perhaps count themselves unlucky not to claim the win after hitting the post 3 times. Both sides had stated this was a real attacking encounter and could have finished any score so maybe a point a piece is the fairest outcome after all.
Finally, it was MBFC vs Shooters in another equal and exciting game, finishing 2-2. With MBFC and the refs caught in traffic, the game was delayed by 10 minutes and Shooters seemed intent to make up for lost time as they high pressed from the kickoff and raced into a 2-0 lead with goals from Koshi Nakayama and Kazuhisa Takeda. MBFC took the half time break to re-group and came out much stronger in the second period with the combination of Pablo Garavito Chong and Li Ziye paying dividends as the latter celebrated his birthday in style with 2 goals to draw the game.
