Kano Pillars stop Enyimba

Reigning Glo Nigeria Premier Football League champions, had Kano Pillars to wait for 45 minutes before re­cording the only goal of the highly anticipated top clash against 10-man Enyimba at the Sani Aba­cha Stadium.

According to reports monitored on sl10.ng, the first goal mouth action hap­pened in the fourth min­ute and it came off a long throw from Samuel Tswan­ya but Moses Ekpai failed to direct his header beyond Moses Ocheje in goal for Enyimba.

Pillars dominated the game in the midfield but failed to create any clear cut openings and it was Enyimba who almost broke the deadlock in the 28th minute.

A well taken driven by Kamal Sikiru went over the bar but had it been a little lower than that goalkeeper, Theophilus Affelokhai, would have been left with no chance to stop it.

A combination of good goalkeeping from Ocheje for Enyimba and poor ef­forts from the league de­fending champions kept the scores at 0-0 until the dot of half time.

Closer to the half time break, Pillars got the break­through of their dominance when Ukpai released a long ranger which beat Ocheje much to the delight of the crowd at the Sani Abacha stadium.

Ten minutes after the restart a piece of magi­cal skills saw Chinonso Okonkwo weaved his way into the Pillars box but Daniel Etor shot over when the ball dropped to him.

Last season’s top scorer Mfon Udoh twice came close to leveling things for Enyimba and his second ef­fort a curler in the 68 min­utes shaved the upright.

However, any hope of an Enyimba comeback was made almost impos­sible when captain Chin­edu Udoji was given his marching orders for a sec­ond bookable offense with five minutes left.

Enyimba failed to trou­ble Kano Pillars after the red card and Pillars ran out worthy 1-0 winners.

Tweet