Sungaipadee FC, also known as the “Budo Tiger”, is a Narathiwat based club which was formed in 2016 and their win on Saturday was just their second of the 2017 Euro Cake Thai League 4 season.
Going into Saturday’s game the Andaman Dragon sat at 3rd in the nine-side league table on 31 points, the Budo Tiger sat at 9th on just seven points.
From the off you could see that Phuket were expecting the game to be somewhat of a walk in the park, how wrong they were.
Sungaipadee clearly had one thing on their mind on Saturday and that was walking away from Surakul Stadium with the full three points.
Phuket, however, well who knows what they had on their minds, but to the fans it certainly didn’t appear to be winning the game.
Throughout the first 45, although Phuket did have goal-scoring chances, not one of the team’s strike force, including the club and league’s top scorer Nattapoom Maya (7) were able to find the net.
The ball went wide, over and pretty much everywhere else except for in Sungaipadee’s goal.
Yes, Nattapoom has had a good season as far as goal-scoring is concerned, however, he is a temperamental player and he either has a good game or a bad. Saturday was the later.
Let’s just say that the teams played out a dry first half with neither side getting on the score sheet.
Phuket’s fans, who are slowly dwindling away as the season goes on despite their run of good form – there were just 590 in the 15,000 capacity stadium on Saturday – were expecting Phuket to up the anti in the second 45, but that wasn’t to be the case.
They played an impressive passing style of football, but most of that was conducted in their own half. To put it more precisely around their penalty area.
But surprisingly it was Phuket who opened the scoring in the 60th minute of play. But that was only down to a lucky goal.
A clearance from the centre of Phuket’s half caught Sugapipadee’s goalkeeper, Muhammad Yumree Hayeehama (1), totally off guard.
Muhammad was some 10 yards out of his box when the clearance was made, at first he went to catch the ball then realised his positioning, the ball then bounced over his head and Phuket’s Porncha Rodnakkaret (25) made the most of the mistake and walked the ball into the back of the net.
But 14 minutes later was the big turnaround in the game, well from Sungaipadee’s side of things anyway.
A nice pass forward from Issah Adamu (20) on the halfway line found Daniel Omaboey (17), and he skilfully dodged two Phuket defenders and then beautifully chipped the ball over the head of Phuket’s keeper Jirasak Kunnapan (69).
But then came the most confusing aspect of the game as far as phuket were concerned, and it was down to the coaching staff.
Soon after play had resumed a Phuket player went down with an injury, while he was being treated another Phuket FC player, Tevarit Junsom (26), also received treatment for a problem with his ankle.
Soon after, and following his first kick of the ball from when play had resumed Tevarit went down due to a problem with the same ankle.
Most fans could see he was in trouble, but as the physio gave him treatment he made an X signal with his arms. Not sure if this meant that the player could not continue or whether it meant not to make a substitution.
However, after five minutes of the player being on the sideline, and still receiving treatment, fans were calling for a substitution to be made as the team was down to 10 men and the Budo Tiger were taking this opportunity to pile on the pressure.
Somehow Phuket’s coaching staff seemed oblivious to the situation and still didn’t make the change, and during that time, close to 10 minutes with Tevarit being off the pitch, a poor clearance by Jirasak found a Sungaipadee player, he passed the ball to Omaboey who took it to the left of Phuket’s goal along the touch line and from a very difficult angle slotted the ball home to give the visitors the three points.
Saturday’s result means that Phuket (31 points) have now moved down to 3rd in the league table after Pattani FC (33) beat Yala United 1-0 on Friday night (July 28). They are also now some eight points adrift of Satun United (39) after they beat Hat Yai FC 2-0.
Phuket were set to play Yala on Wednesday night (Aug 2) when The Phuket News went to press. They still have four games remaining this season, the first of which will be played on Sunday (Aug 6) with kick-off set for 6pm (please see fixtures table).