A jubilant Punjab-A team scored late in the game to draw their match against HKFC-A to keep them ahead of Club in the standings of the HKHA Premier Division following the encounter at Sports Road on Sunday Feb 23.
This draw puts third-placed HKFC-A 5-points behind in the standings and drops Punjab 2-points off the lead—Khalsa-A, the competition’s leaders, won their match against Shaheen-A 7-1 at the Valley Ground to push their points tally to 38.
The important top of the table clash between Punja-A and Khalsa-A takes place this coming Sunday (Mar 2).
Punjab vs HKFC-A
Punjab-A opened the scoring after 14 minutes of play. But Club-A came back to equalise just three minutes later and then took the lead 2-1 from a well-converted penalty corner within a further 2-minutes.
Punjab scored just before half-time to make score 2-all into the break.
A goal each in the second-half took the final score to 3-all.
It was a fair result, but a win could have been recorded in either direction as flurries of attacks took place to the final whistle. The match was very even all the way through with fast-moving competitive hockey with many hard chances (and some easier ones) going astray at each end of the pitch.
Valley vs SSSC-A
In the other match Valley-A played resolutely with good pattern hockey to beat SSSC-A 6-3.
After leading 3-1 at half time Valley continued their good play to secure a further three goals. This keeps Valley firmly in fourth place in the standings. At one stage it looked like SSSC-A could make a comeback, but Valley pushed ahead with another two goals to complete the win.
Bottom-half Matches
In the lower half of the table, Pak-A beat Elite-A 3-1; SSSC-B drew with KNS-A 3-all; and KCC-A lost 2-1 to HKFC-B. The results find KNS-A and HKFC-B back on equal terms at the top of the lower half of the Premier table.
Next Matches
Four matches take place on Sunday Mar 2 at the Valley Ground (HV1), KNS-A play KCC-A; SSSC-A play Pak-A; Shaheen-A play Valley-A; and Khalsa-A meet Punjab-A. Two matches will be at the Football Club Ground where Elite-A play HKFC-B, and SSSC-A take on HKFC-A.
