Rhinos bounce back with big win in second friendly

Kota Kinabalu: Sabah Rhinos redeemed themselves with a 5-2 big win over Super League outfit T-Team in a friendly at Sultan Ismail Nasiruddin Shah Stadium on Friday night.It was an immediate response from the players after their earlier 6-1 thrashing by another Super League team Terengganu in the first friendly on Tuesday night. The match which started at 10.45pm saw the Rhinos take an unexpected 3-0 lead at half time and former JDT II player Stuart Wark, who is on trial with the team, did himself a good favour with two opening goals before being substituted in the second half.

Umareng Bacok, who was promoted to the senior team this season also netted two, and the fifth was from Muamer Salibasic while the home team replied through Nor Hakim Hassan and Mohd Ramzul Zahini Adenan.

Assistant team manager James Wong, who was watching from the dug out, said the match showed some positive signs from the players.

"They played really well last night. It may be because of the stick they received after the embarrassing defeat by Terengganu. But for whatever reasons that motivated them, I would say it was one of the best performances by the team this season.

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"They were excellent both offensively and defensively and they followed the instruction very well as a unit.

Of course they is still work to be done but I can clearly see some potential in this team.

"Scoring goals has always been the problem for this team this season. But last night the players managed to overcome that and Leopold (Alfonso) also had a shot that hit the post otherwise, we could have scored six."

"The match against Terengganu was a different story. It was not as bad as the 6-1 score suggested.

In fact we started very well and after taking the lead we had two open chances but missed.

Then they were given a dubious penalty to level the score followed by our own undoing for letting in soft goals which could easily have been prevented.

"Despite that, the team played hard right to the very end and we created several great chances but failed to take them.

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It could have easily been a draw and Mike Mulvey (last season's Rhinos coach), who met us after the match, also admitted that we played well but were very unlucky.

"And I hope the players will learn from the two matches played here to understand that if you don't score goals you cannot win games. They must keep that in mind and rectify it before the start of the second half season against JDT II next month."

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