Women's ACT: Malaysia Fall To Japan For Third Loss In Four Matches

KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 16 (Bernama) -- The national women's hockey team suffered their third defeat in four matches when they went down 2-1 to Japan in the round-robin stage of the 2024 Women's Asian Champions Trophy (ACT) at the Rajgir Hockey Stadium in Bihar, India today.

Although Malaysia opened accounts through a Nur Iman Adawiyah Mohd Suhami field goal in the 26th minute, Japan hit back through Shiho Kobayakawa (49th minute) and Miyu Hasegawa (51st minute) for victory.

Malaysia are currently in fourth place in the six-team standings with three points (having defeated South Korea 2-1 and losing 4-0 to India and 5-0 to China earlier),

China top the standings with nine points, followed by India (also nine points) in second spot, Japan (five points) third, South Korea (one point) fifth and Thailand (also one point) sixth.

While the top four teams will advance to the semi-finals, the bottom two teams will slug it out in the fifth-sixth playoff match.

Malaysia will wrap up their round-robin fixture against Thailand tomorrow (Nov 17).

Last year, the Malaysian women ended their ACT campaign in fifth place after edging Thailand 1-0 in Ranchi, India.

-- BERNAMA