The departure of Mike Barton from the Merlions's ranks meant the player lent had to return and Chew Meng Siong rightly went to join with his Merlion team mates to Temasek's ultimate detriment.
Playing with only 5 players, namely, the brave Aidil Idris in goals, the valiant Fred Martens in midfield/defence, the everpresent Kanan Packrisamy in midfield/attack and courageous Ranjit Singh everywhere else with the compliment of Gurupal's son in the gaps, Merlions galvanised and destroyed Temasek in the 2nd half.
Scoring 4 unaswered goals, courtesy of Eric Tan 2, Gurupal and Richard Ng the Merlions claimed an important victory and look odds on to make the 3rd & 4th placing game.
The day's other game saw the top notches of the league lock horns. Hollandse Club Blue and Hockey Village People met in what was a quasi semi-finals. The Blues settled faster than the 2 teams and made their advanatge show afetr just a minute and forty two seconds, Wim Ten Hof scoring following a penalty corner.
Village People started to get their act together following the set back and made many attempted to draw level but they were denied by either a steady Han van der Broek in the Blues goal or stift defending from Hans Peter Sluiser in the heart of their defence.
Stephen Whitton was marked out by Marcel Aggenbach and that nulified Paul Ridley's excellent passes from deep in the People half.
Alan Banister and Dave Misso worked tirelessly in the People midfield with Tim Barkem despite being pre-occupied with the 5-meter rule put in a good shift for the Villagers.
Speaking of good shifts, Paul Blomendal's robust play is noteworthy as was Balbir Singh's similar vigour in tackling in the previous game.
Ross Taylor would have wished he had a better game especially since Ten Hof managed to score once more in the second half after Pascal Blanchet added one and with a subtle pass set up Jonathan Price to add to his tally on 3 goals to give the Blues a convincing 4-0 win. Fred Martens turned out for the Villagers to get them up to 8 and Martin Painter despite saving a few crucial shots on goal would have thought to be capable of keeping in the least 2 of the 4 goals out.
On top of all there was some exceptional moves from Joeri Gianotten in partnership with his Blues team mates and the Villagers added their own sleak moves but the day belonged to the Blues.
We enter Matchday 10 next week with Mucha Hockey taking on Temasek (the latter needs 8 points to secure their finals spot) and Hollandse Club Oranje doing battle with Hollandse Club Blue (Orange need to secure maximum points to stay in the hunt for third spot, whilst Blues need only one to confirm their spot in the grand finals). See Table below by clicking on it
