A bite of the pie also belonged to coach Stewart Hall who took the opponents by surprise in the second half by assigning different roles to his players. Apart from Venkatesh shuffling across the midfield, Nigerian forward Chika Wali became a support cast for Jeje Lalpekhula who started as a defender, leaving the Simla Youngs defenders confused — for Samson Oyeleke, Jaktu Hembron and Premlal Kujur had done little wrong in the first half in holding the same bunch.

What made things worse for them was Charles Efemena’s injury and the striker could be seen limping with the match hardly into its 30th minute. Failing to combine with Tsering Dhundup, Obed Kamei, Manoj Chaudhary and Umesh Sharma in the midfield, he was often outnumbered by rival defenders. To fill in the void, Samson kept pushing down to the opponent half for most of the free-kicks and corner kicks, but this left the danger area vacant for Venkatesh and Co.