The Papua New Guinea women’s national team left for the Asian continent to continue their preparation for the OFC Women’s Nations Cup, which will take one team from Oceania to the intercontinental playoff.
This time Papua New Guinea played the Tri-Nations tournament; the opponents were the hosts Singapore and the national team from Seychelles.
In the first match the Lakatois thrashed Seychelles 9-0. Seychelles had also lost to Singapore 6-2, so the two teams faced each other to determine who would take the tournament title.
In the match against Singapore, Sonia Emhabe scored her first international goal within 15 minutes remaining to give Papua New Guinea the win.
Coach Nicola Demaine was pleased and praised the team: “I was pleased to see the players ability to maintain their focus and technical skills under pressure of an international game and Infront of the crowd. There are definitely things we want to improve on. The more we play and learn, the more variety and complexity we can add to our collective tactics… We showed everyone that we can compete at this level, against any team with a higher world ranking. We took Papua New Guinea on and we gave a good account of ourselves, which I am very proud of. There was fantastic effort from every player and as a team, we put on a valiant effort”
The Papua New Guinea women’s team is likely to return to another training camp and play one or two more friendly matches to prepare for the Nations Cup in July – as the federation said.
Oceania Football Center 