Saturday, December 3, 2016

Double figures for Crown

Match Report: PPCFC 10 Football Future Pro 3 (Pre-Season Friendly).
In this afternoon's friendly at RSN Stadium, a Crown team made up of players who didn't play in last night's friendly with Western, put FFP to the sword after a sluggish start. The 2nd-half was brightened considerably by the first appearance of Shane Booysen since his ACL injury in February. FFP got the ball rolling with the first goal, through Privat on 10 minutes. Four minutes later Sin Kakada curled in the equaliser from a 20-yard free-kick. Within a minute FFP went further ahead and on 18 minutes Pov Ponvuthy made it 2-2, heading in Sraing Titchhy's cross. On 35 minutes, Thai striker Somkiat Kunmee netted his second goal in three minutes, with deadly accuracy, and Mat Sakrovy rifled in a far post volley from Yeu Muslim's cross, a minute before the break.
With the addition of Booysen at the interval, Crown continued to take the game to FFP and the South African signalled his return with a curling free-kick into the top corner from 18 yards, eight minutes into the half. A minute later he moved effortlessly onto Kakada's pass and sent a first-time chip over the stranded goalkeeper for his second. Next he turned provider with a perfect pass for Somkiat to run through and lob the keeper on 64 minutes, for his hat-trick goal. With 71 minutes on the clock, Somkiat turned neatly in the box and set up Kakada for his second goal and a minute later, Sakrovy's bye-line center was turned into his own goal by a defender for Crown's tenth. Baldwin scored a consolation for FFP but Crown failed to convert another half-dozen chances through Booysen and Somkiat before the final whistle.
PPCFC line-up, back row, LtoR: Chanvuthy, Boris, Chanchav, Titchhy, Sakrovy, Sovann. Front: Kakada, Muslim, Somkiat, Piphop, Ponvuthy.

Shane Booysen made his eagerly-awaited return to competitive football for the second-half of today's practice game with FFPCA. And he crowned his return with two goals in the first nine minutes of stepping back onto the pitch in a 10-3 victory. His last game was in February before his ACL operation. How did he feel? "Playing 45 minutes after such a long time was breathtaking, quite literally. I never thought that coming back so soon would be so hard, but I had a good time and enjoyed myself. My touches were a bit rusty but with more match fitness I will get there. Overall experience was really nice and playing with my new teammates and the younger guys made my job a bit easier as they ran more. Let's see and hope that my match fitness will return and our team will pick up their performance. There was a touch of rustiness and I was not clinical enough. One ball I approached it thinking it was a goal already but it shows you are never bigger than the game, so its something I need to work on to be back to where I was." From all PPCFC and football fans, welcome back Shane. 

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