Official madness

The 4th official Sukhbir Singh is 3rd from the left, with beard

Let me tell you a short story. The 4th official at football matches has a couple of tasks to do, in the case of the AFC President's Cup matches, they check the playing shirts and ID cards in the dressing rooms beforehand, they tell us how many minutes the referee is adding on, they hold up or allow the physio to treat injured players...and they are supposed to handle substitutions and hold up the board with the players numbers. The last one is pretty crucial. So how the heck did the 4th official for the opening game, Phnom Penh Crown v Yeedzin, Sukhbir Singh from Singapore, manage to forget his subs board? Crown's influential midfielder Emmanuel Frimpong tore his calf muscle a minute and a half into the game and hobbled off. The Crown bench assessed the injury and by the fifth minute were ready to send Chan Dara onto the pitch as his replacement. That is until Mr Singh realised he'd forgotten something. Throughout this time, Crown were playing with ten men. Eventually, the official went to retrieve his board and Crown were able to make their change after 9 minutes 11 seconds. Fortunately for Mr Singh, Crown did not concede during this period or else there might have been a mini riot on the Crown bench. I wonder if that was in the AFC report of the game.