A group photo of the Brunei Darussalam Men’s Netball team. - AMNC
BRUNEI Darussalam finished fourth in the Asian Men’s Netball Championship after being ousted 61-27 by India in the third placing match at the KLIA Quarters in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia recently.
India’s imposing goal shooter used their height to the advantage and despite suffering from a barrage of baskets, Brunei Darussalam still succeeded in converting numerous opportunities.
However, the third quarter proved a step too far as India 22-point haul compared to Brunei’s modest figure of five demonstrated the vast gap between both teams.
Brunei managed to finish fourth in the championship thanks to a better negative goal differential than Hong Kong and Singapore after completing the round robin stage with two points.
The bottom three teams were tied with similar number of points but Brunei reached their last game of the tournament guaranteed of at least fourth after conceding 23 goals lesser than fifth place Hong Kong and 41 goals than Singapore.
Brunei’s attacking exploits could be highlighted as one of the main reasons behind their fourth place finish after succeeding in scoring more than 20 goals in each of their game while Hong Kong were unable to do match them in two games and three for Singapore.
Brunei’s only victory came in the opening tie with a narrow 27-26 win over Hong Kong and nearly registered a second after they narrowly lost to Singapore 23-24 in the fourth round.
The men’s netball team were humbled by India 58-26 and enjoyed a close battle with inaugural winners Malaysia in a respectable 31-24 defeat.
Brunei also fell to a 42-25 defeat by Pakistan, who finished runners-up to the hosts after a 35-34 final defeat, in the six-team group.
Hong Kong finished fifth after a narrow 29-27 win over Singapore who ended the tournament in sixth place.
Twelve players were selected in the Brunei team including a team captain and were accompanied with a team manager.