KUALA LUMPUR – The national men’s hockey squad lost their first test match against Ireland by a narrow 2-3 margin through goals from two debutants at Lisnagarvey Hockey Club, Hillsborough, Northern Ireland on Tuesday.
Ireland started aggressively with Sam Hyland scoring a field goal as early as the second minute before Conor Empey doubled the lead six minutes later through another field goal. Both players were making their first appearances for Ireland.
The Speedy Tigers took until the end of the third quarter to bounce back when Mohd Azrai Aizad Abu Kamal managed to score a field goal in the 45th minute, before penalty corner specialist Muhammad Razie Abdul Rahim equalised through a penalty corner in the 52nd minute.
However, Conor emerged the hero of the 14th-ranked team in the world when he converted a penalty corner three minutes before the final whistle (57th minute) against Malaysia, who are ranked 11th in the world.
National head coach A. Arulselvaraj admitted that his men need to do more work while in their own area and need to defend better, besides not wasting penalty corner chances.
“I am a bit disappointed with this result because we controlled the game well and we were rewarded with five penalty corners compared to Ireland who only got one penalty corner, but managed to finish it off.
“In terms of chances to score, we also had more chances than Ireland and the setback today was in terms of defence and strength to handle the ball in our own area,” he said in a statement issued by the Malaysian Hockey Confederation (MHC).
However, he praised the players for fighting back.
Meanwhile, national striker Muhammad Firhan Ashaari said that he is determined to bounce back in the second match against Ireland at 2.30 am on Thursday (Malaysian time) by correcting the mistakes he made in the first tie.
“In today’s (yesterday’s) action, we could not achieve our first victory against Ireland and in the initial minutes of the match we made mistakes that caused us to concede two goals early on.
“Overall we controlled the game well, we just have to correct every mistake made and for the second match we will try to find victory and play better than today,” said Firhan.
