Qantas Joeys 2 (Kamal Ibrahim 34’, Jared Lum 87’(pen))

Bahrain 1 (Sayed Dhiya Saeed 20’)

Football West NTC squad members Trent Sainsbury and Million Butshiire played their parts as the Qantas Joeys came from a goal behind to defeat Bahrain 2-1 in their opening match of the ASEAN Football Federation (AFF) Under 16 Youth Championships in Jakarta on Wednesday.

Both players were in the starting line up, but it was Bahrain who opened the scoring in the 20th minute when Sayed Dhiya Saeed was sent clear and his chip beat keeper Robert Kolak.

The Joeys were level 14 minutes later, Nikola Stanojevic found Butshiire whose flick found Kamal Ibrahim who scored from close range.

After the half-time break both teams looked for a winner with Bahrain coming the closest when Ali Habib Ali hit the crossbar, whilst the Qantas Joeys had a number of free kicks around the box that they were unable to capitalise on.

With the match seemingly destined to end in a draw, Kerem Bulut was fouled in the box by Sayed Hashem Adnan Mahfood and Jared Lum converted the resulting penalty to give the Joeys an important victory.

In the other match of the evening Malaysia defeated Singapore 2-0.

“There were times where I felt that we were lucky while there were others when we weren’t but that is football,” said Australian head coach Martyn Crook after the match.

“But the first game is always important although I felt that we needed some time to settle down. We have to improve from here and we will be working hard in these few days to continue developing this team.”

The Qantas Joeys play the host nation Indonesia in their next match of the AFF Under 16 Youth Championship on Friday 11 July 2008 (kick-off 8.30pm AEST).

Qantas Joeys Team:

Robert Kolak (gk), Trent Sainsbury, Petar Franjic, Brendan Hamill, Chahine Noujaim, Kamal Ibrahim, Jared Lum, Benjamin Kantarovski (Christopher Bush 56’), Nikola Stanojevic, Joseph Costa (Benjamin Harrington 72’), Million Butshiire ( Kerem Bulut 87’).

Substitutes Not Used: Nathan Farrell, Lawrence Thomas (gk), Marc Warren, Tedros Yabio.