KUALA LUMPUR: The national men's hockey team started the four-match international test series against Australia with a 3-0 defeat at the Perth Hockey Stadium this afternoon.
Facing the world number one team, nicknamed the Kookaburras, the Malaysian squad, trained by head coach A. Arul Selvaraj, were stunned as early as in the first minute when Tom Wickham connected with his teammates' superb cross.
Australia then made it 2-0 in the 19th minute through Blake Govers’ penalty corner goal before wrapping up victory through a Jeremy Hayward penalty corner setpiece in the 30th minute.
However, credit to national goalkeeper Muhammad Hafizuddin Othman for preventing the Aussies from piling on more goals.
Meanwhile, Arul, who described the early minutes of the game as a disappointment, said he would make an assessment of the match to identify the weaknesses that led to the goals.
“But overall, goalkeeper Hafizuddin played well and thwarted some the Aussies’ attempts. What we need to improve further is better control of the ball so as not to lose the ball back to the opponent easily.
“Two of the three goals were from penalty corners and we will do an analysis, we will re-evaluate our weaknesses to ensure an improvement ahead of tomorrow’s second match,“ he said in a statement.
Despite losing 3-0, the Speedy Tigers overcame Australia 4-3 on penalties in a friendly shootout session with the Aussies, after the match.
“It’s a positive thing for us because we won the penalty shootout against a team ranked number one in the world,“ said Arul.
The Speedy Tigers will continue with the four-match international test series against Australia tomorrow before finishing the last two games on April 26 and April 28 respectively.-Bernama
