The National Women’s Hockey Team managed to secure three points in the inaugural action of the round robin, Field Hockey event, SEA Games 2023 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia at the Morodok Techo National Stadium after brilliantly defeating the host Cambodia, 8-1.
With the results recorded today, the National Women’s Team tops the chart as a result of the goal advantage and the goals scored today are through six field goals while two more goals are through the advantage of penalty corners.
Nuraini Abdul Rashid and Siti Nur Arfah Mohd Nor were the players who scored two goals in the first action where Siti Nur Arfah contributed two field goals in the 11th and 20th minutes, while Nuraini scored two penalty corner goals in the 13th minute and the 29th.
Also scoring today was Nur Afiqah Syahzani Azhar who opened the scoring in the ninth minute followed by Nuramirah Shakirah Zulkifli (m’28), Fatin Shafikah Mahd Sukri (m’36) and Nurmaizatul Hanim Syafi Shiek Fuad (m’49).
The head coach of the National Women’s Squad, Mohd Nasihin Nubli Ibrahim explained that the players had been fully prepared mentally and physically to perform in hot weather conditions and to meet opponents who lined up many naturalized players from India and Pakistan.
“Today’s match the players were too excited to find a goal and a little lapse in defense when the opposing team made a counterattack caused us to concede a goal.
“The tournament has just started and we still have some variations of penalty corners and today’s match we took more of an approach to flick directly to the goal which saw the goalkeeper and the opposing defense save some of our penalty corner attempts.
“For the meeting with Singapore on Friday, I want the players to increase the intensity of the game and be more disciplined especially during ‘ball possession’ because we want to find a comfortable victory,” he explained.
Tomorrow is a rest day for the National Women’s Team before going down for the second action against Singapore on Friday (May 12) at 10:30 am, Malaysian time.
