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Thursday October 29, 2009

Malaysia all fired up to win second Sevens meet

By AFTAR SINGH

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia are all fired up to win their second consecutive tournament in the IRB Asian Sevens series in the Borneo leg, which will be played at the Likas Stadium in Kota Kinabalu this weekend.

Malaysia did not feature in the first leg of the Asian series in Shanghai last month due to the fasting month. But in the second leg in Brunei on Oct 18, Malaysia emerged as the champions.

The third leg this weekend offers ranking points for teams to qualify for the Hong Kong leg of the world series in March and the tournament has attracted 12 teams.

Malaysia are the sixth seeds and they are Group A with top seeds Japan, Thailand (7th) and Indonesia (12th).

Group B comprises second seeds Hong Kong, South Korea, Guam and Brunei and in Group C are China, Taiwan, India and the Philippines.

Coach Jude Rampajow said that his boys were in high spirit after winning the second leg.

“It will be a tall order but I have faith in my players. We have been training hard and we know what to expect from the our opponents,” said the former international.

“We have three very good Fijians (Semi Sevikorovana, Apenifa Vastuva and Nakine Seniu), who are the backbone of the team.”

Foreign players, who have resided for more than 36 months in Malaysia and have never represented their country, are allowed to feature in the Asian series.

Jude added that Japan were their strongest opponents in the group.

“Thailand will also pose a threat to us. However, we should have no problem getting into the quarter-finals as the top two teams in each group and the best two third-place teams will advance,” he said.

There are total of six legs in the Asian series and the Philippines will host the fourth leg (Nov 7-8) followed by Iran (Nov 14-15) and Sri Lanka (Nov 28-29).

Only the Shanghai and Borneo legs offer ranking points for teams to qualify for Hong Kong leg of the world series.

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