The Scorchers will on Saturday afternoon face Madagascar in their second group stage match at the ongoing Cosafa Women’s Championship, in a must win encounter to keep the team’s dream of a semifinal slot alive.

This is a fourth meeting between the two sides at the competition and Scorchers will be aiming at maintaining their dominance over the islanders after winning all the previous encounters.

In 2017, Malawi won 6-3  while the 2018 and 2019 encounters ended in 2-0 wins for the Scorchers.

Last year the Lovemore Fazili led side won 3-1 enroute to their debut title win.

Madagascar currently lead group B with three points after a 5-1 win against Mauritius on Wednesday.

After a one-all draw against Botswana in the opening match,  Malawi must collect all the three points and Fazili is confident of a positive result on Saturday.

“The team is well prepared and we have tackled almost all the departments in our sessions. We are confident that we are going to get a positive result and with a good score line.

“We met Madagascar last year, and even though we won 3-1, they gave us a very tough run so we are not underrating them and looking at their performance against Mauritius, the team has improved tremendously,” said Fazili.

Fazili says he is delighted with the coming in of TP Mazembe Striker Sabina Thom, who missed the first match as she was still in transit, saying her coming has boosted the team’s front line.

“We had a problem upfront in the previous match as we missed a lot of chances. The coming in of Sabina has  boosted our striking force and being one of the top preforming players in our last year’s victory, we really needed her presence. We are looking forward to scoring more goals against Madagascar,” he said.

Only group leaders will advance to the knockout stage of this year’s competition.