More Agony for Keith Gumbs and Swirijaya

This was the game that Swirijaya had targeted to make a further move up the Points Table. They were playing at home to a lower ranked team – Botang FC on Sunday March 7. A victory would have catapulted them into third place. The script seemed to be going perfectly when Gumbs strike partner Pavel Solomin opened the scoring as early as the 10th minute but someone forget to tell the Botang FC and so they came with their own script. Kenji Adachihara leveled the scores in the 20th minute from the penalty spot and the visitors held on up to the interval without any further damage to the score line. Soon after the resumption (in the 53rd minute) the visitors created a hush in the Palembang stadium when they were awarded a second penalty. This time it was converted by Ali Khaddafi. The visitors then adopted a strong defensive position and saw off all of Swirijaya’s raids in the remaining time.

Swirijaya remained in 5th position with 34 points but this is not expected to last as the sixth and seventh placed teams (Persib and Persija) now have two games in hand and are on 33 and 32 points respectively.

Arema continues to lead the Indonesian Super League on 45 points ahead of Persiba in second with 40 points. Swirijaya stands 11 points adrift and has a lot of work but they have two more home games in which to make amends. They tackle Persema on Saturday March 13, and then one week later welcomes the league leaders Arema to their home.

Source: www.strictlysportsinc.com.