| Fadhil Yunus |
BRUNEI Darussalam’s national women hockey team crashed to their biggest defeat in recent history at the 3rd Women’s Asian Hockey Challenge following a 10-0 loss to Hong Kong at the Hockey Stadium of the Hassanal Bolkiah National Sports Complex.
Hong Kong’s third successive victory and clean sheet ensured them a spot in Saturday’s final with Pakistan almost poised to join them even if the latter slip to defeat today.
Hong Kong, who looked overwhelming favourites to win the title, capitalised on a tiresome Brunei team who only played Pakistan the day before though in all honesty it was a lopsided affair.
Hong Kong’s Tiffany Chan was the top performer after scoring five goals but to be fair she made it looked easy as illustrated by how the final three goals were expertly taken.
Tiffany helped her side to a 2-0 lead with a double in the first quarter before Melissa Law Ka Mun and Ka Man Mok scored a goal each in the second quarter to make it 4-0.
Yuet Ngan extended her side lead even further before Melissa grabbed her second of the game.
Tiffany effortlessly glided to the shooting circle before lifting the ball into the goal before captain I Ka Lo rolled her shot wide.
Tiffany was allowed too much room to unleash a fierce low drive into the bottom corner with calls reverberating across the dugout to block her shot falling to deaf ears.
Hong Kong played the ball from the by-line before sending the ball into the centre as Tiffany showed delicate control before coolly lifting the ball into the net with a quality goal.
But the nightmare did not end there as Tiffany converted from a penalty corner in the 57th minute to condemn the tournament hosts into a double-digit defeat.
The Stingers had hoped to reduce the deficit compared to the 8-0 loss in the opening fixture and were confident of doing so when they ended the third quarter trailing by 6-0.
“Hong Kong are a very good side. We can’t take it away from them. Brunei were confident before the game especially with good results they managed against Pakistan yesterday,” said goalkeeping coach Harry Baker.
“It was always going to be difficult because it is Brunei’s turn to play two games in a row. It is possible that they’re still tired from yesterday’s game. I don’t think they fully recovered by looking at them but Hong Kong took advantage.
“Hong Kong were the confident side and they expanded on their game as well. It was always going to be difficult for Brunei,” said the goalkeeping coach.
Meanwhile, Hong Kong coach Arif Ali highlighted an improved performance from his charges compared to their first game against Brunei Darussalam.
“If you don’t look at the score-line but you watch the performance, it was a lot better than the first game we’ve played. So after a rest day, we expect to come back maybe a little bit slow but I told the girls we need to start quick today,” said Arif.
“That’s what we did. We started well and we scored the first goal inside one minute.
“We started quite well and then Brunei defended really well so I have to give them credit which stopped us in the middle for a while. We couldn’t score goals but then we picked the momentum and I’m sure they were tired because they played yesterday too,” he said.
Arif could be fielding his strongest possible selection despite sealing their progress into the final highlighting his aim to preserve the winning mentality his team had built throughout the competition.
“I’m not going to rest anybody. We need to keep that winning mentality going because it’s a team effort. We make sure we go out there with the 18 players again,” he said.
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