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Not getting carried away with Hong Kong win: women's football coach

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ANI Football

Indian women's football team had registered a convincing 5-2 victory over Hong Kong in their first friendly match against the hosts but national head coach Maymol Rocky said that though the victory was clinical in nature, they are not getting carried away with it.

"We took our chances and we scored. It was a clinical performance by the team but that does not mean that we dwell on the result," AIFF quoted Rocky, as saying.

"There are still a lot of things to be worked upon and things to be rectified but I am happy with the way the team played and performed. Now we gear ourselves for the next match tomorrow (January 23) once again against them (Hong Kong)," she added

 

India will face Hong Kong again in their next match and the coach is hoping to continue with the winning momentum.

"We will use tomorrow's match once again as an area to experiment with our tactics, hoping to continue our winning momentum," she said.

India forward player Dangmei Grace, who opened the goalscoring floodgates for the team in as early as the 6th minute in the match against Hong Kong said, "We wanted to start off with a win and that is what we did. Now we aim to continue our winning form."

"When we play them again tomorrow, it can be difficult for us as they (Hong Kong) will be apprehensive of our abilities and might sit back and defend more," she added.

Ratanbala Devi, who scored India's fifth goal in the 83rd minute of the match, said: "The best part is that we are creating chances. As long as we are creating chances, goals will come. We could have even scored seven goals yesterday had we made the most of the 50-50 opportunities. However, we are confident of getting another win going into the second match against Hong Kong."

The silver lining might be the five goals that India scored, but that does not take away the fact that the team conceded twice. Agreeing to it, defender Sweety Devi said: "If we could have got a clean sheet, it would have been very special. But we learn from our mistakes and we will look to rectify them. We gave their forwards a tough time but momentary lapses cost us two goals."

The last time India faced Hong Kong in 2017 in the Women's Asian Cup Qualifiers, India had won 2-0.

On this, Rocky said: "Every nation wants to develop and so have we in the last few years. The results are an indication of the potential the team has but still we are far away from our goal and these wins should not flatter us".

The Indian team is preparing for the Olympic Qualifiers Round 2 and after tomorrow's match against Hong Kong, they will travel to play two back-to-back matches against Indonesia on January 27 and January 30.

Disclaimer: No Business Standard Journalist was involved in creation of this content

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First Published: Jan 22 2019 | 1:37 PM IST

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