Debuntant Pijpers Coaches Maiden Victory

HONG KONG—Experienced Dutch international Koen Pijpers baptism to the Hong Kong Premier League proved his coaching worth to Hong Kong Football Club-A when his side outplayed Valley-A in an 8-2 goal thriller at Happy Valley last weekend (Sunday 28).

What made the encounter all that more exciting was the exhilarating high pace Club exerted on Valley who were unable to counter their rivals as Club produced attacking raids from all areas of the field.

“We played our own game,” said Club captain Kiren Smith, who pointed to a tough summer training regime whilst handing out kudos to Valley for ‘keeping up with their pace, in both the player and game departments’.

Smith pointed out to their more aggressive ‘passing style’ as a key to their successful title campaign, but have yet to be tested by the more competitive sides of back-to-back champions Khalsa-A, and rapidly improving Punjab-A, SSSC-A and KNS-A.

Clubs’ attacking powerhouse-tactics proved their devastating goal prowess as they notched up three goals in the opening quarter of an hour through a brace from Yan Adams and a single from James Piachaud.

Then the goal floodgates opened up as single-digit goals from Angus Allan and Thomas Moore added to a brace from Gabriel Tso with a final goal from Ferko Spits to round off the scoring for Club. Valley’s Thomas Cousins got the better of Club’s goalie Vincent Cheung when he nabbed two goals to reduce Valley’s deficit on the score-sheet.

Despite that, Smith was adamant that their side would prove over time to be up for the job, having last won the Premier title in the 2011-12 season.

Part of the secret to his side’s resurgence was their acquisition of Pijpers, a summer coaching recruit, after the Dutchman moved to the SAR to set up of his own business here, while Smith also feels some top players joining them will help their cause too.

“Pijpers is a fantastic coach. He has great credentials and he is doing a lot of stuff with us that is working and it’s making a big difference,” Smith said, pointing out their previous seasons lack of cohesion and inconsistency.

“I think that was our problem in previous seasons. We have the ability but what we really needed was someone who could bring us all together and to put more structure into our game as Pijpers is doing [now],” he added, with more ‘balance and steadiness’ coming from the training the team has put in during the summer break.

Again Pijpers role was important as Smith pointed out: “Its so much better when you have someone on the side line managing the game, whereas before all the players were player/coaches on the field and it was hard to manage the team as you’re going, and with a proper coach its making a big difference.”

Smith was exceptionally pleased with how his side was playing as they proved against Valley who sustained attacks from all sides on the field.

“We are choosing our moment to move forward and its not one sided. We are just holding it [the ball], holding it and choosing when we are opening up and passing it at the back and looking for the right channel and its really working for us,” he said, whose next game pits them against newly promoted Hong Kong Cricket Club.

His Valley opposite, Rowan Laurence knew where their holes were and admitted they had “a few things to work on”.

“At the end of the day, their [HKFC] basics were better than ours, they ran the game at us and were fitter than us and they executed where they needed to. Plus we made too many simple mistakes and we [just] didn’t recover, when you make too many mistakes,” said Laurence, who praised Rupert Bolingbroke, for keeping the score line respectable, with some brilliant goalkeeping.

Laurence claimed that Valley had discussed how to counter Club: “We had talked a lot about how to counter their penalty corners and in the past how [Club] did their PCs in a certain way, but they put in a few straight shots,” he said.

“Like one that slipped under the goalie and an unfortunate one sort of dribbled over the line in the corner … what do you do there? It’s unfortunate and when your goalie makes the save, and he made a lot of great ones, plus we are missing some key players including some of our top goal scorers, but it will get better once they get back this week,” Laurence said, adding: “the better team won.”

In other league matches, KNS-A continued their hunt for elusive first Premiership title with a 8-3 victory over Rhino-A, while SSSC-A edged out KCC-A 3-1.

Punjab-A tore Pakistan-A 9-2, while Khalsa-A swept away Shaheen-A 10-1 and HKFC-B and HKCC-A battled to a 2-2 draw.

Eddie So is a freelance photographer and reporter with more than 25 years of journalism experience in Hong Kong.