HOCKEY: Malaysia captain Firhan Ashari produced a scintillating display in his side’s win against the USA at the Australian Youth Olympic Festival on Thursday.

With the half-time score 1-1, Ashari scored five second half goals to hand Malaysia a 6-1 victory and keep them in contention of making Sunday’s gold medal match.

Malaysia had the running in the first 10 minutes moving the ball very efficiently through the middle of the pitch and drawing three penalty corners.

They converted one of those opportunities in the 12th minute thanks to a great strike from Zulhari Hashim.

USA equalised against the flow a minute later with a well worked field goal by Austin Groeneveld.

The goal settled the nerves of the USA players who began to play with a lot more fluency.

Both sides created enough scoring to opportunities but the score remained 1-1 at the half.

Ashari’s first goal came six minutes into the second half from a penalty corner and that was only the beginning as he converted another, as well as three field goals.

The USA were helpless as virtually every shot Ashari got on target hit the back of the net.

Malaysian coach Lim Chiow Chuan was very pleased with his side’s second half performance.

“Happy with the result but not so happy with the performance in the first half because we were a bit sloppy with our skills but we got it fixed more or less in the second half,” Chiow Chuan said.

“The captain was on form today with five goals in the second half which was great.”

USA head coach Chris Clements said the team need to stop those purple patches of goals going against them after two heavy defeats in the first two days of competition.

“It was a game of two halves basically, we played a pretty solid first half but we weren’t as positive with our play as we should have been in the second half,” he said.

Beau Greenway
Olympics.com.au