KUALA LUMPUR: National under-18 boys’ squad coach Syahir Asyraf Rosli is content with his charges’ performances at the Asia Rugby Under-18 Sevens Championships which concluded in Hohhoy, China yesterday (Sept 14).
Malaysia finished the boys’ competition in fifth place overall after beating Qatar (41-0) and India (22-12) in the classification matches.
The Bunga Raya juniors missed out on the semi-finals on Saturday after going down to eventual champions Japan (47-7) and narrowly losing to Taiwan (17-14).
They, however, managed a win against Kazakhstan (40-5) in group B, which had been dubbed the “Group of Death”.
Syahir said he was pleased to see his charges fight to the very end in all their matches.
“The standard of competition has increased tremendously this year, all the teams have shown significant improvement,” said Syahir.
“Our target was to reach the last-four which unfortunately, we narrowly missed out on.
“Despite that, I am still pleased with the boys’ who showed tremendous fighting spirit on both days of the competition.
“They learnt a lot from playing here and we now know what we have to work on to improve ourselves. It was a valuable experience for the team.”
Malaysia, however, found the going tough in the girls’ competition in China.
The squad suffered losses to Uzbekistan (15-0), Japan (64-0) and India (24-5) in the group stage followed by a 26-10 defeat to Kazakhstan in their fifth-eighth place classification match.
Malaysia thus ended the girls’ event in seventh position from as many teams.
© New Straits Times Press (M) Bhd
