After a goalless first half, the I-League team swapped its nonchalant ways for a more aggressive outlook in the second half to post a 7-0 win over a hapless BEL.
As a goodly crowd looked on, HASC’s players looked far from interested in scoring and spent most of their time sitting back, defending against the enthusiastic BEL strikers, who made impressive runs but couldn’t quite find a way to score.
HASC skipper Murali made things look very easy in midfield and threatened to either score or make plays which resulted in goals, but BEL’s defenders did well to keep HASC’s feeble attempts at bay for the first half.
In the second half, HASC looked every bit the side the crowd came to watch. Murali, busy setting up strikers Hamza and RC Prakash, got into a good position 30 yards from goal and fired past BEL goalkeeper Vasudevan S in the 51st minute to give HASC the lead. The midfielder, who had earned a yellow card in the 33rd minute for an aggressive tackle, scored his second goal through a penalty in the 57th minute after team-mate Prakash was taken down by Shivakumar N.
Prakash scored his first goal in the 66th minute off a pass from Hamza. Hamza (70th, 74th) finally got a good look at the goal and struck twice in a span of five minutes to make it 5-0.
Satish Kumar (86th) and Malengangba (88th) slotted one each to complete the formalities as BEL looked on helplessly.
Other result: ‘A’ Division: BWSSB: 3 (Uday Kumar 22nd, Satish 48th, 79th) bt Oriental: 0.
