The Fiji women’s hockey team had a commanding 9-1 win over Samoa in their opening Oceania Pacific Cup match at the National Hockey Centre, Suva, yesterday.

Head coach Alison Southey was pleased with the side’s performance. Laced with a few seasoned players who participated in both the Pacific Games and World Cup in Oman, Southey said, they’re hopeful and confident.

These players include Catherine Fabiano, Divyankar Kumar, Melba Nautu and Maxine Edwards.

“It’s always good going into a tournament winning,” she said.

“We’re optimistic, we’re taking one game at a time- we’re just going to put everything that we’ve done at training in the game.

“We stuck to the game plan. The girls have been training really hard over the past few months.”

Southey added that the four-day tournament would showcase the talent and skills of the home sides especially the rising players and debutants..

Both the Fiji men’s and women’s have named two sides for the tournament- Fiji and Fiji Warriors.

“One improvement that we picked up is the defence, we need to just get a bit tighter on the defence and we should be good,” Southey said.

“We’re fortunate enough to have two teams, it’s just really good exposure for our local athletes.

“We have about five to six players that went to the Pacific Games and six players that went to the Oman World Cup.”

The Fiji women’s side met Tonga in their second game at 4:30pm yesterday after this edition went to press.

Seven countries and 16 teams are competing in the men’s and women’s competition which will end on Thursday.

Feedback: sereana.salalo@fijisun.com.fj