RHB Singapore Cup Preliminary Round: The round-up

W.Ng
info@sleague.com

Winners of the last three S.League titles. Conquerers of the last two Singapore Cups. Out in the first round.

Even with all the toils of their itinerant ways in the AFC Champions League, few would have dared back SAFFC for the ignominy of a first-round exit from the RHB Singapore Cup – yet the Warriors are hardly the only big guns to have been booted out at the first hurdle.

With the eliminations of Woodlands Wellington and Young Lions, only Tampines Rovers remain of last season’s semi-finalists in an opening round of upsets that saw a few teams emerge victorious in their preliminary round games after years of trying.

In an indictment of sorts of the local sides, just three managed to secure qualification to the quarter-finals, with all three of the Singapore sides paired against foreign opposition coming up the worse for wear.

And while neither of the two top-performing local sides in the Great Eastern-Yeo’s S.League so far has made it past the first round, it was a vastly different story for the foreign sides, who will now take up five of the eight quarter-final spots.

Two members of the foreign legion playing in the S.League have progressed to the quarter-finals, with Japanese outfit Albirex Niigata (Singapore) avoiding opening-round elimination for the first time in three years, and current S.League leaders DPMM FC of Brunei qualifying for the quarters for the first time in six attempts.

If ever there was a prime advocate in the case for role specialization, however, it would be Geylang United.

The Eagles managed just five points from the 18 on offer when they started the season with the triumvirate of Mike Wong, Lim Tong Hai and Seak Poh Leong sharing head coach duties but have claimed 10 points from the four league games they have played since Wong took sole charge.

They will be now also be pleased to have made it through after falling at the first instance for the last four years – especially when their progress came at the expense of undeniably the biggest casualties of the first round.

Defending champions SAFFC have won this competition three times but they will have to be content with focusing their efforts on recapturing the S.League for an eighth time after Yasir Hanapi and Syed Thaha condemned a virtually first-choice Warriors side to a first stage bow-out.

Geylang’s reward for a job well done is a mouth-watering tie with another of the S.League’s traditional bigwigs.

Home United may be struggling to find their feet in the league this year, but the four-time Cup winners still managed to make light work of the cellar-dwelling Balestier Khalsa.

Two of the Tigers’ former players came back to haunt them as Norikazu Murakami and Kengne Ludovick handed the Protectors their passport to the next round in a 3-0 win at the Toa Payoh Stadium.

The third of Singapore’s Big Three, Tampines Rovers, needed a Fahrudin Mustafic free-kick to sneak past Sengkang Punggol, and they will now have to be wary of a side that dispatched of Singapore’s best local side in the league this season.

Gombak United never quite recovered from Jaslee Hatta’s first-half dismissal as they fell to a 3-1 defeat at the hands of the impressive Albirex.

The Bulls have now failed to make it past Round One for two years in succession, while the White Swans will be attempting to progress beyond the last eight for the first time.

The Warriors’ vanquished opponents in last year’s final, Woodlands Wellington, saw their hopes of going one better than their 2008 run go up in smoke when they were knocked out in the first match of this year’s competition by Thai Premier League leaders Bangkok Glass.

The team formerly known as Krung Thai Bank, making their debut in the competition, needed just one goal by Tanat Wongsupphalak to secure a quarter-final berth, and will lock horns with Cambodian outfit Phnom Penh Crown, who defeated Young Lions 2-0 with a Jean Lappe Lappe brace to claim their first quarter-final position since they began participating in the competition in 2007.

S.League leaders Brunei DPMM extended their fine start to 2009 with a 1-0 win over Indonesia’s Fandi Ahmad-led Pelita Jaya to remain on course to become the first foreign side to claim silverware in Singapore.

The return of Singaporean football’s prodigal son ended in disappointment, albeit under controversial circumstances as Algerian forward Abdelhamid Beguiga appeared to have handled the ball in the lead-up to his goal.

The Bruneians now have a quarter-final date with TTM Samut Sakhon, who saw off the challenge of Super Reds in the only other all-foreign affair of the first round, matching last year’s feat of reaching the quarter-finals when they took part as Tobacco Monopoly.

The Thais benefited from the insider knowledge of former Sengkang and Balestier man Paul Ekollo, who led the way with a brace as his side emerged 4-2 victors over the Koreans.

With four of the five foreign teams still in the competition on the same half of the tournament bracket, we shall be seeing one of them making it to the final – and with the Warriors now out and Home and Tampines the only other sides still in existence to have won the competition, don’t put your money against the Cup finding an all-new home this year.