Semi Finals

SFL Semi Finals Night at the Phonsavahn pitch.

Bing Bare Nong Hai and Friends book their place at the finals day next week in two exciting games.

Han Dao Wan 1 Bing Bare Nong Hai 1 - Bing Bare win 4-3 on penalties.

In the battle of the restaurants, the game started tentatively and in the first ten minutes both sides had few clear cut chances to break the deadlock. BBNH scored a good team goal to take the lead and this sparked some extra life into HDW, Dtoong hitting the crossbar with the keeper well beaten. HDW finished the half strongly but failed to equalize. In the second half it was one way traffic with HDW eventually levelling the scores when Kamla bundled the ball in through a goal mouth scramble. Then, from a well taken corner that pulled the keeper out of position HDW headed wide of an empty goal when it seemed easier to score. BBNH responded and went close to winning the match with a shot bouncing of the post and the referee blew for full time.

Five players were selected from each playing squad present, HDW won the toss and chose to shoot first. With the scores at 1-1 in the shoot out, Nick the HDW play maker shot wide. The following five penalties were successful and with the score at 3-4 Viet the HDW goalkeeper stepped up to smash his effort against the bar leaving the BBNH team ecstatic.

Friends 2 IFFC 1

With the Friends squad minus a few key players away in the provinces and IFFC at full strength it looked as thought the pre-tournament favourites were in for a tough game. True to tournament form IFFC continued their early goal scoring run in the competition. Number 69, Greg, scored with an audacious lob from wide on the left with just 2 minutes on the clock. IFFC had some more chances to extend their lead but crucially failed to finish as Friends began to find some rhythm to their play. The IFFC keeper, Jeremy, produced some fine saves to preserve their lead as the pace of Friends began to expose IFFC in midfield. Koe of Friends poked home a scrappy goal and then some substitutions from IFFC, notably Javier, gave them more bite in midfield, by half time the game was in the balance. The second half saw both teams work hard but IFFC were kept quiet in attack and Song of Friends produced the performance of the tournament so far. He kept popping up every where to frustrate IFFC and produced a skilful run and shot only to be denied by a fine save from the IFFC keeper. Then, with IFFC guilty of not playing to whistle, Friends counter attacked and Song finished off a flowing move to take the lead. IFFC rallied and Javier hit the woodwork with a long range shot. Then in the dying minutes IFFC were denied by the woodwork again and some how the rebound was missed when an equalizer looked certain.