By Femi Atolagbe

Sunshine Queens Football of Akure have begun their championship playoffs with a 1-0 victory against Kazeem Eletu FC in the opening match of Group B.

Miracle Ohaeri scored in the 82nd minute of the encounter to give the Akure based side first win of the competition.

Sunshine Queens started the match with all determination geared towards taking the team back to the elite league by dictating the pace of the encounter from the blast of the referee till the end of the game.

The 2015 Women Federation Cup champions, however, had several penalties appeal waved, but were not deterred with the referee’s calls and continued mounting pressure on their opponent.

The continued pressure, later resulted in a convincing penalty kick after Moyinoluwa Owolabi was brought down inside the box in the 73rd minute.

Unfortunately, Sunshine Queens missed the penalty, through Divine Onwuchekwa who hit the cross bar from the spot. The team pressed up for more.

The former Women Federation Cup champions rued many scoring chances in both halves of the encounter, until the experienced defender, Miracle Ohaeri tapped into the net from a goal mouth scrabble in the 82nd minute from a corner kick.

The head coach of Sunshine Queens, Oladimeji Abimbola commended her players for playing to instructions, saying his side will continue to approach the game as they come.

He said: “This is our first match, we will continue to improve game by game, we have our target coming here and the target must be accomplished.”

The commissioner for Youth and Sports Development, Mr Bamidele Ologunloluwa charged the players to score more goals in their next match.

The commissioner said: The team will get N200,000 for winning the match and another N50,000 for first goal scorer”, as earlier promised.

“I will be with you fully tomorrow, we will play the match together, this is just the beginning, you can do better”, he said.

Sunshine Queens will continue their championship campaign against Honey Badgers FC in their second match tomorrow by 9am.