The Futsal Ferns have finished their tour of China on a high note, beating Kuwait 4-0 at the CFA Four Nations Women’s Futsal Tournament in Chengdu.

It is the first time that a New Zealand national futsal team (Futsal Whites and Futsal Ferns) has won an international match outside of the Oceania Football Confederation.

The Futsal Ferns, who went down 8-3 to China and 4-1 to Thailand in their opening two games, earned their victory with four different goal scorers. Shivy Anthony, Maxine Cooper, Dayna Manak and Sarah Alder all found the back of the net in the second half.

Futsal Ferns Head Coach Nic Downes was thrilled with the performance and the result.

“It has been a challenging tour for us, but we are super-excited to finish off with a victory,” said Downes.  “Kuwait still caused us a number of problems on the court, but we were able to retain the ball for a bit longer than we were able to against the other two teams. We had more of a focus on how to create and finish our chances and we were pleased the players achieved that.”

Captain Maxine Cooper, who scored two goals on the tour, said the three games in China have been a great learning curve for the Futsal Ferns.

“It has been great to play some of the best countries in Asia, in China and Thailand, they were a big challenge but playing them allowed us to see that we are competing with those countries and we are not too far off.

"It is pretty exciting to see what we could achieve for the future.” 

The win continues the progress of the Futsal Ferns who have made significant strides since first being formed two years ago.  

They won the Trans-Pacific Futsal Cup against New Caledonia in their debut series in September of 2017 in Tauranga.  The Futsal Ferns also headed to Australia last January and claimed the Gold Coast International Futsal Challenge.

CFA Four Nations Women’s Futsal Tournament
New Zealand 4 (Shivy Anthony, Maxine Cooper, Dayna Manak, Sarah Alder)
Kuwait 0
HT: 0-0

Article added: Wednesday 11 September 2019