Written by: Khalis Rifhan

Warriors Football Club coach Alex Weaver was extremely pleased with his boys’ performance in their 2-1 win over Geylang International in their opening match of the 2014 Great Eastern Yeo’s S.League at Choa Chu Kang Stadium on Sunday night.

Although Weaver felt that the majority of his team did well in the match, he singled out goal-scorer Hafiz Rahim for praise.

“It’s lovely to see Hafiz Rahim playing and doing so well. He is a very intelligent and creative player. We did not even start [Shi] Jiayi and that shows the quality we got in the squad,” a delighted Weaver said.

“But without the other players providing him with the balls, he can’t do what he did tonight.

““I really loved watching our team play tonight. Everyone saw the kind of attacking players we got in the team and they played to our philosophy. It was a nice mix of strength and discipline as well, apart from that one incident in the sending off.”

Eagles head coach V.Kanan was unhappy with his team’s poor performance and felt that more work was needed on the training ground.

“The first half, we were not playing to instructions. We lost the ball too often. If we can’t keep the ball, we need to defend and that’s what we have been doing,” said Kanan.

“Defensively, there is not much problem with the team, it is only our attacking. We only had one or two shots at goal, and we got to work a lot on our attacking.”

With Geylang travelling to Bishan Stadium to take on Home United next on 1 March, Kanan hoped he would be able to field a full-strength squad then, after only having two outfield players on the bench in the match against Warriors FC.

“One good thing for the next game, our striker (Leonal Felice) will be back. He has not get his (Employment) E-pass yet and Hamqaamal Shah will be back too. Mustaqim Manzur is sick today and hopefully he be back for the next game so that at least we will have depth in the team,” explained Kanan.