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Sharks patchy form continues with their 4th loss on the trot as they fell 2-4 to Eastern Vale at Tampines Secondary School. Eastern Vale went two goals up at half-time before Alexander closed the gap at the start of the second half. The opposition however took full advantage of some bad defending to restore their 2 goal lead shortly afterwards and got their fourth to a contentious penalty before Alexander made the score respectable by adding his second. The loss put Sharks in the relegation playoff after 6 games and if results continues, it will look to be another season of struggle for the boys in yellow.
The game kickoff with Sharks missing almost half their team with the likes of Charlson, Harold, Betrand, Jeff Arnold, Isaac and Jiayong missing the game to name a few though the biggest miss was David in goal who had to pull out of the game at the final hour. His miss meant that Hamzah was call upon for his trial in goal. Joining his was Vincent who is a familiar figure having played for Raptors for a couple of seasons before the switch and Alexander making his debut up front. Sharks started the brighter of the two teams stroking the ball confidently across the park and the first opportunity fell to Heng Li though the forward were unable to take advantage of the half-chances. Eastern Vale grew in confidence as the play wore on but against the run of play, they took the lead after Zhuoneng gave too much space for his marker to put across an innocuous shot which sailed into the net; a mistake the manager wasn't pleased. The goal didn't dampen Sharks spirit as Alexander lit up a few eyebrows with several marauding runs into the opposition half. Nonetheless, Eastern Vale defense was quick to address the issues and kept Sharks attackers at bay.
Just as Sharks were getting back their rythmn, the opposition scored their second after a mistake by Vincent failing to clear after a good stop by Hamzah in goal. Two goals up and Sharks were reeling considering the start they made. As much as they tried to get back into the game, the scoreline stood as Sharks goes into the break with the 2 goal deficit.
Second half started as brightly as the first with Sharks pegging the opposition back for the first 5 minutes. However Eastern Vale managed to take the game by the scruff of their neck as they controlled the proceedings till they were caught by a quick counter. Heng Li finding Alexander with a low cross as the latter twisted his man and put the ball into the net with a placed shot. That seemed to put the game back into contention but on the other end, Eastern Vale pegged Sharks defense into making a bad pass and they took full advantage of the mistake to regain their 2 goal advantage.
Sharks didn't put their heads down though the man in black put any hopes of getting back into the game to sleep when he awarded a contentious penalty, a decision and coupled with numerous littered for the duration of the game. Eastern Vale took full advantage of that discretion to go 4-1 up though Alexander managed to make the scoreline respectable with his second.
The manager commented after the game, 'There are games whereby at times, you get the rub of the green but this isn't one of them. We don't normally comment about the level of refeereing but this referee had certainly did it not just for this game, but for several games. While offside is hard when you have only a referee, to actually award a few bad one littered for the duration of the game is just bad. In any case, we just didn't take our chances when we had them and the team needs to defend better in the next game.
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