Pre-season friendly match vs Phetchaburi Rajabhat University

Phetchaburi Rajabhat University 1 – 1 Hua Hin City FC

One week on since Hua Hin City had been shocked by the ability of this university team, we were back at the Rajabhat University Stadium again. Following a convincing 9 – 1 win against Ban Pongjai the previous day, Hua Hin hoped to put in a much better display this week.

Keen to improve on last week’s scoreline, we were surprised to see Coach Sebastien was starting the game with mainly youngsters, supported at the back by the ever steady Songkran, and last season’s leading goal scorer, Arnon up front. I would be surprised if the average age of this starting 11 exceeded 20 years. However, all players have been signed on merit, and everybody should be given their chance. They were not disgraced.

The youngsters had the better of the first half, but neither side created any goal scoring chances.

For the 2nd half, Coach Sebastien introduced a few of his more mature players, but Rajabhat continued to defend very effectively. Rajabhat were unlucky not to take the lead in the first 10 minutes when they shot wide at an open goal. Hua Hin persisted in their attacking game, and gradually broke the back of Rajabhat, after coming very close to scoring on quite a few occasions. A lovely ball through to Nicolas on the edge of the penalty area saw him work his magic past a couple of players before handing the ball on a platter for Feli to slot home.

At this point, the game took a very strange turn. Rajabhat replaced the referee with a very dubious character, who made some questionable decisions.

First sign that something was wrong was when Maraba was held firmly in a bear hug. He gestured towards the new ref, who confirmed he has seen it, but was not going to do anything about it.

That was soon followed a deflected ball to hand incident that would never normally be penalised. On this occasion the referee awarded a penalty. The penalty kick was brilliantly saved by Hua Hin’s young under 17 keeper.

Within 10 seconds of the save, the referee was pointing to the penalty spot again. The whistle was blown too long after the incident for it to have been an infringement during the first kick. Justification for a second kick was not evident. This time, despite valiant efforts by the young keeper, the ball ended up in the back of the net.

Coach Sebastien showed a lot of passion following this incident, and Hua Hin City pressed very hard to regain the advantage. However, the game ended 1 – 1, despite Hua Hin coming very close on many occasions.

On a bright note, both Hua Hin sides (major changes at half time) played a lot better than last week against a once again very good Rajabhat side.

#2018 #Preseason #Friendly #Match