Beijing's crown stays in place
CHINESE champions Beijing successfully retained the Hong Kong Super League crown after crushing Taiwan's Taichung team 29-21 in the final at the Kowloon Park Indoor Games Hall yesterday.
Beijing were in a class of their own against a moderate field of four local outfits and the Taiwanese following a decision by Asian powerhouse South Korea to skip the tournament this time.
The Koreans, represented by the Kyung Hee University in the past two years, won the first edition of the Super League in 1993 but they were beaten on a penalty shootout to Beijing in their title defence last December.
Beijing easily trounced Data Insurance and Akita in the preliminary round to install themselves favourites against Taichung, who also went into the final with an unbeaten record after early victories over Sin Fung and South China.
The Taiwanese, however, gave the Chinese champions a scare when they came storming back from 5-9 down with three field goals by Sung Meng-yuan to close the deficit to only one point after 22 minutes of play.
But Beijing's goalkeeper He Jun showed impressive form to halt the strong Taichung rally and the Chinese champions scored five goals without reply and went on to open up a 15-10 lead at the interval.
Beijing never looked back and romped away to a convincing nine-point victory, with captain and long-serving Chinese international Wang Xindong the top scorer with 11 goals. Sung led Taichung's scoring with nine points.
'The tournament is not as competitive without the Koreans but we have no reason to complain,' said Beijing coach Xia Yi after his team pocketed the $15,000 championship prize.
'It will be a quiet 1996 for us because we [China] are not in the Olympics, so the target for my own team would be to concentrate on the build-up for the 1997 National Games.' Akita pulled off a minor upset in the play-off for third with a 21-19 victory over local champions South China.
