A relatively strong Vikings Squad met up at Japanese Association for a very warm 3pm kick off. A few late arrivals saw Morfar making his season debut in the starting 11, while Stereo got the chance alongside Rafa and Jesper in defence. Unfortunately Stereo suffered an early injury and with Fallesen entering the picth a few adjustments had to be made. On the midfield Elbo had taking over the captains arm-ban in the absense of tvilde and Just, and he filled out the role of a leader very well.

Vikings opened the goal scoring account early when Chris nicely converted a chance to make it 1-0 and only minutes later he set-up D.T to make it 2-0 only for D.T to hit it straight at the goalie, while Naoki's conversion on the
rebound was correctly disallowed by the officials (offside) . Minutes later a poor clearance in the Viking defence allowed Gaulois to equalize. Chris snatched another goal to make it 2-1 and with plenty of chances coming our way it was only a matter of how much we would be up at half time - we thought.

However the French fought back well and did not hesitate to take advantage of another two personal mistakes by the Vikings to go into halftime with a 3-2 lead. The halftime talk was about commitment and about converting our chances as we had been firing the ball straight at the goalkeeper or over the goal way too many times. Lars Moeller came on in defense and contributed with alot of positive energy and strong tackles. 

Our strikers had understood the message and within 7 minutes of 2nd half we were up with 5-3 after 1 goal by Chris of a Calamari corner and two goals from Rasmus off a rebound from a well-struck Bugis shot and another Calamari corner.

Some 10 minutes later Rasmus scored his 3rd and with 6-3 Viking with 30 minutes to go, we used our last 2-3 subs and Buck, Johan and Kenni all came on and delivered good performances and especially Kenni were close to scoring from a nice header. Instead the referee gave a rather weak penalty to our opponents and with 4-6 with 20 minutes to go it was still all to play for.

However on the day Vikings in Chris had a very dangerous weapon and scoring his 4th goal of the match the wrapped it all up at 7-4.  What an
excellent way to celebrate your birthday (Friday) - and thanks for the beers after the game mate ! Also a thumbs up to Calamari who had 3 assists on the day and to hattrick hero Rasmus. Vikings three main strikers have now scored a total of 28 goals this season, and if we can just eliminate the defensive errors we will continue to win games.

Thanks to the officals who had a good game and thanks to Gaulois for great game played in a nice atmosphere. All the best for the rest of the season.

Rafa

For more news please check www.singaporevikingsfc.com