S’wak women’s soccer team using Thais as acid test in run-up to SUKMA history

By Rozlin Rusharmeen Rosmin

KUCHING: Bumi Kenyalang (The Land of Hornbills) will gauge the mettle of its women’s football squad for the 2024 Malaysia Games (SUKMA XXI) with friendly matches against two football clubs from Thailand in Bangkok from July 20-24.

Team manager Francis Uling Majoi said the results of the Sarawakian team in the country nicknamed the ‘War Elephants’, will be a benchmark for the state’s true strength to face the biennial games that run from Aug 17-24.

“We will hold friendly matches with two women’s Under-21 football clubs from Thailand, namely Jaifa Academy and Jap Phon Plem. This outing is like a bonus for the Sarawak team because the players there are mostly trained at the high-performance academy at home.

“We want to gain as much playing experience as possible abroad so that the players can perform in any situation… especially in the last phase of training when we identify the strengths and weaknesses of this 23-player line-up ahead of SUKMA 2024,” he told Bernama.

This edition of SUKMA will see Sarawak compete in Group A which also includes Sabah and Pahang, while Group B consists of Selangor, Penang and the Federal Territory.

“We are ready to contend with any team in Group B. We see that the Sabah team is anchored by many national (Malaysian) players and state players. However, for me, all the teams from these six states are seen as balanced .

“Our players are between 16 and 21 years old, we have no national players in the Sarawak team, but we believe they are in the making,” he said, giving full confidence to head coach Sufian Ibrahim’s leadership in managing the women’s football team.

In the meantime, Sufian admitted that the mission of grabbing the women’s football gold on the SUKMA stage is not an easy path to chart, but the advantage of playing at home must be fully exploited.

Using the battlefield cry of ‘Agi Idup Agi Ngelaban’ as fuel for the Sarawak women’s football team, he said the performance of his charges through a series of friendly matches has yielded results, thus a bright opportunity for Bumi Kenyalang to make history in this edition.

“There has been an improvement in performance in terms of technique, understanding, fitness and most importantly the planned tactical understanding, so I am confident that the Sarawak squad will put up strong opposition against the teams in Group A, namely Sabah and Pahang,” he said, adding that previous friendly matches involved teams from Sabah and some clubs from the peninsula.

With less than a month left before curtains-up to SUKMA 2024, Sufian said all his players have been thoroughly prepared in terms of technical and tactical training in addition to mental, physical and identity preparation since February.

The women’s football competition starting on Aug 13 will take place in Kuching involving two pitches, namely Stadium Negeri and Padang D in Petra Jaya.

SUKMA 2024 will see 37 types of sports being contested involving 488 events, comprising 236 men’s events, 217 women’s events and another 35 mixed men’s and women’s events, with the Games venues in nine divisions of Kuching, Samarahan, Serian, Sri Aman, Betong, Sibu, Mukah, Bintulu and Miri.

SUKMA, which was inaugurated in 1986, has been organised in Sarawak twice, in 1990 and 2016. — BERNAMA