Hadi Harris (SIN) stealing the ball from the Russians
SINGAPORE – Host Singapore did not let up in its second game at the 6th World University Floorball Championship as they ran rampant against China to earn a 37-0 win. The pace of the game was unrelenting as Singapore refused to budge out of China’s half, and proceeded to score more goals.
The big match of the day saw Finland defeating fellow championship contender Czech Republic 8-5.
The Finns had suffered a scare when they allowed a three-goal lead to whittle but there was no denying the irresistible Finns as they scored three goals to pull ahead in the final four minutes.
The Japanese team did not pull any stops in their 3rd game in Day 2 of the Championship. Despite giving their all, they lost out to the stronger Swedish team 0-20. Having won their first game against the Swiss in the opening day of WUFC, the Swedish team is all fired up and all ready to meet the Czech Republic tomorrow in a game that is definitely going to be very exciting. “This is the first time that we have played against a non-European team and we are really impressed by them. The Japanese team fought from the moment the game started, all the way for 60 minutes. Their goalkeeper was fantastic and made many good saves”, Sweden’s N°2 Eric Bjork said. “We won against Switzerland yesterday and that was very good. We have to be focused for our game against Finland tomorrow and once we win that, we will be in the top two and a very good chance to win the championships. We are here to win.”
Kim Lundstrom (SWE) waiting to score
In the second game across the OCBC Arena hall, Singapore, amidst cheers from the home crowd scored two consecutive goals to catch up with the highly experienced Russian team to score 3-4 at the end of the second period. But they failed to catch up and had to succumb to a 4-6 defeat.
In the women’s tournament, host Singapore over-classed Malaysia with 8-0 and the Scandinavian battle between Sweden and Finland ended in a 7-2 victory for the Tre Kronor.
“I think we did quite well in terms of all the build-up – we were very composed and definitely had the drive, so we will use this to play the game tomorrow”, said Singapore women’s captain Heng Hui-Shan. “We aim to top our group, but we will take one game at a time. We should play well against Japan and give it our all. This win has definitely boosted our morale but we will review on what we did today and continue to improve on those areas that we should.”
“For our performance, it was really up against a higher-ranked team, and it was really good to see the players stepping up”, Malaysia women’s captain Cheah Pei Yi commented. “Basically our aim here is to grow more and so we focused on improvement more than anything else. We tried to push ourselves and give 110% to go home without regrets.”
RESULTS DAY 2
MEN
China (People’s Republic of) – Singapore: 0-37
Japan – Switzerland: 1-19
Russian Federation – Republic of Korea: 23-0
Czech Republic – Finland: 5-7
China (People’s Republic of) – Malaysia: 1-8
Singapore – Russian Federation: 4-6
Japan – Sweden: 0-20
WOMEN
Singapore – Malaysia: 8-0
Sweden – Finland: 7-2
(Source: WUCOC – Images: VOXSPORTS)
