THE national women’s hockey squad will now aim to finish fifth for a sixth consecutive time at the Asian Games after they missed out on a semi-final spot in Nagoya on Sunday (Sept 27).
Malaysia’s hopes of a medal finish in Japan were dashed after they suffered a narrow 1-2 defeat to South Korea in their final Group A match at the Gifu Prefectural Green Stadium.
Both teams entered the final match tied with 9 points each in second and third place, with the winners set to join group winners China (15 points) to the semis.
The Speedy Tigresses will face Indonesia in the classification match on Friday (Oct 2).
A sluggish start from Malaysia gave South Korea the opportunity to take the lead through Park Seung-jae in the 15th minute, before An Su-jin doubled the score in the 29th minute.
Nurmaizatul Hanim Syafi converted a penalty corner to score the consolation for Malaysia.
Head coach C. R. Kumar admitted they were under the pressure.
"This was a must-win situation but we didn’t play up to expectations in the first two quarters," he said.
"We did come up stronger in the last two and played much better. Unfortunately, the set pieces didn’t work as expected. We could have done much better from the beginning."
"It is not the end of us because we have two games to play to finish fifth."
Malaysia had earlier beaten Kazakhstan 5-0, Bangladesh 3-1, Taiwan 5-0 but lost to defending champions China 0-4.
