Sabah women team bag third place in Tun Sharifah Rodziah Cup

KOTA KINABALU: Sabah women defeated Selangor 2-0 to settle for third placing in the 31st Tun Sharifah Rodziah Cup tournament at UiTM Stadium in Shah Alam yesterday.

Jaciah Jumilis was the match winner for Sabah after scoring a first half brace in the third and fourth place match.

The flanker found the net in the 10th minute before adding a second in the 18th minute which proved enough to edge Selangor.

Head coach Mohd Aiyyman Shah Johny Abdullah was happy with the victory which eased some pain from losing the semifinals to Malacca on Saturday.

“Congratulations to the players for winning the third placing,” he texted yesterday.

Aiyyman however said the scoreline could have been greater had the players were sharper in front of goals.

According to him, converting the chances have been the team ‘Achilles Heel’ throughout the tournament, including in the 1-2 penalty shoot-out defeat to Malacca in the semifinals after the match had ended 2-2 in regulation time.

“It has been our main problem in the tournament. We could have won with a huge scoreline but just could not apply the final touches to convert the chances into goals.

“We could not even convert when the opposing goalkeeper has been beaten and it seemed our players are singing the same song from the semifinal match,” added Aiyyman in his text message.

For the record, Sabah women are the 11-time champions of the tournament but their last title came in 2004. The tournament was not held again until 2015 but Sabah have failed to win the title since.

Meanwhile, last year’s runnerup Kedah defeated Malacca 2-0 in the final to become the new champions of the country’s premier women football tournament.