Malaysia climbing the international ladder

These two sides played each other in 2009 in Malaysia'sfirstever fixture.

The match takes place at Padang in Singapore with the Malaysia squad being made up mainly of players from the Royal Selangor Club.

It is the fiirst time in the three-year history of the Asian 5 Nations competition that a women's test match will be played as a curtain raiser.

The Asian Five Nations (A5N) is a competition which started in 2008 between the mens teams from Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Kazakhstan and the Arabian Gulf. With this years competition serving as a qualification route for the 2011 World Cup, a big interest in the games is expected, so the two women's games will be boosted by increased exposure.

Later this year the A5N will offer another opportunity for greater exposure to women's rugby in Asia with , the national womens rugby teams of Japan and Hong Kong will also curtain raising a game in May.

Signapore's full team convincingly beat Malaysia on their first outing last year but they'll be hoping for a closer score this time around with Singapore's second string in action.

Malaysia captain Lim Chin Wei said:

"This game will be a a privilege and an honour. We hope to win of course and this will be a boost to some of our new players to get them ready for the upcoming SRU league."

Head Coach Raimi Yusof added:

"As we just came back from Hong Kong for the seven's tournament, we had to change mindsetsto start playing 15s. It's going to be an interesting game to see, as wehave developed this year and hope to give Singapore a run for their money."