The national women’s indoor hockey team is determined to fight back after suffering a 3-5 defeat to Kazakhstan on Sunday and drawing in their second match in the 2023 Indoor World Cup.

The International Hockey Federation (FIH) Indoor World Cup is underway in Pretoria, South Africa.

The Namibian women’s team played their opening match of the competition against Kazakhstan on Sunday and lost, but pulled themselves together on Monday to draw 2-2 against Canada.

Their next match at the FIH Indoor World Cup will be against Ukraine, at 17h50 on Tuesday.

In an interview shared with Nampa by the event organiser, team coach Erwin Handura said he was confident that the African women’s champions will remain in the hunt to reach the play-off stages.

“It was not our best day in the office on Sunday as we struggled to recover after Kazakhstan rattled us with two goals in the first four minutes,” he said, adding that hard work and fresh tactics lay ahead of the team as they gave away soft goals.

Meanwhile, women’s team captain Maggy Mengo said three games remain for them in the competition and she is hopeful that with hard work, they will make it through to the next round.

“In our opening match we weren’t able to connect and we didn’t play our game. But as for the second match, I believe it was just tough luck as we did not convert most of our chances, but we are looking forward to the remaining games,” she said.

In the men’s category, Namibia found the going tough as they went down 1-7 against the Netherlands on Sunday and 0-2 against Austria on Monday.

Team captain David Jacobus said he was happy with their performance and scoreline against Austria, which is one of the best sides in the world.

Source: The Namibian Press Agency