THREE IN A ROW

T-Team registered their third consecitive victory in the Malaysian Super League for the first time after a 1-0 victory over City Boys, Kuala Lumpur at the Sultan Ismail Nasiruddin Shah Stadium last night. Shahrul Ezrain Samsuddin, playing on the left flank for the Terengganu team scored the all important goal midway through the first half.

For the several hundred fans that came to watch the match, many were heard complaining about the home players inability to breach the Kuala Lumpur defence on a more frequent basis. There were a number of over hit passes that render the effort to chase them as an exercise of futility by the forward line. On the occassions when the ball found their way to the target, the players' first touch let them down.

Both goalkeepers, Syamsuri Mustafffa of T-Team and Kuala Lumpur's Norazlan Razali were not really tested during the match apart from crosses and overhit through balls which were easily dealt with. Perhaps T-Team were missing the creative input from Ismail Faruqi who underwent a surgery on his knee on Friday. Despite this Kamal Rodiarjat, Norhisham Hassan, Harizul Izuan and Shahrul Ezrain gave an energetic performance in the middle of the park.

The winning goal came when Ezrain cut in from the left and with Kuala Lumpur players backing away from him he decided to shoot just from outside the penalty box. His stiff grounder beat Norazlan who could only watch as the ball went past his outstretching hands and rolled onto the net.

It was a very important goal as this win would give more confident to the T-Team players when they travel to the capital to take on PLUS FC on Tuesday. The result saw T-Team maintained their steady climb to the upper half of the Super League table and now just three points behind Terengganu.

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