IT was a triple whammy on a gloomy Wednesday night for Filipino campaigners, who bowed out of contention from two international tournaments while narrowly missing a golden finish in another in separate outings all over Asia.
The Filipinas, the national women’s football squad, battled back from a 0-1 halftime deficit to draw with Myanmar 1-1, a result that ended their title-retention bid in the MISG Serenity Cup at the Lac Thray Stadium in Haiphong, Vietnam.
Burmese Win Theingi Tun converted a penalty kick in the 33rd minute to give them a 1-0 halftime lead before teener Nina Mathelus finally equalized in the 71st minute.
Uzbek referee Asker Nadjavaliev seemingly gave the Filipinas all the chance in the world to score the marginal goal beyond the six minutes in injury time before finally blowing the whistle that spelled the death knell for the PH footballers.
The charges of Australian coach Marc Torcaso needed the win to sustain their drive to keep the country’s one and only international trophy which they won in 2022 after an epic run at the Rizal Memorial Stadium.
They wound up third in Group B with four points while Myanmar, with seven points on two wins and a draw, and the Australian Under-23 squad, which thrashed Timor Leste 9-0 in the other group match, took second with six points to seal their spots in the crossover semifinals.
In Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, the first to fall was Gilas Pilipinas, which absorbed a 64-80 shellacking from back-to-back defending champion Australia in the FIBA Asia Cup quarterfinals.
Perhaps even more heartbreaking was the fate suffered by cue ace Chezka Centeno, who dropped a close 6-7 decision to China’s Yu Han in the battle for the women’s 10-ball gold medal in the 12th World Games in Chengdu, China.
In a battle of wills and skills against a foe she handily beat 9-5 for the women’s world 10-ball crown in Klagenfurt, Austria in 2023, the 26-year-old Zamboanga City native had victory within her grasp after battling from a 3-5 deficit to advance to the hill first at 6-5.
But a critical error in the 12th frame allowed the stoic Yu, 33, a three-time world 9-ball champion, to level the count before cleaning out the next frame to clinch the mint at the Civil Aviation Flight University of China Tianfu Campus Gym.
It was the second pool medal for the country in the meet for non-Olympic sports since Carlo Biado ruled the men’s 10-ball event in the 2017 edition of the sportsfest in Wroclaw, Poland.
