In my article on 14th March titled: National Juniors - Is it another reflection of the "sinking" standard of Malaysian hockey?, i was highly critical of the national junior coach. Forecasting to be the final of the 4 nation tournament at Johor Baru, the Juniors were struggling to beat a minnow team like Singapore. However yesterday for the 3/4th placing the Juniors thrashed the Singaporeans 6-0.
So am I going to unwind my earlier criticism? Before I get to that answer, I firstly must congratulate the team, coach and the team management for bouncing back and getting the right results. This I owe to them and I must do it.
It is good the Juniors bounce back but we must not get too excited. It is only Singapore and on the first place we should have had that score when we initially played them. Still it is tremendous that they came back with full of venom to win the game with a high score. Some may believe that we are bullying a weak team. Whatever it is, there was creditability in the Juniors performance.
The national coach must appreciate that by holding such a position, he is in the limelight and therefore everything he does is under scrutiny by the public. If he decides to open his mouth and make comments that is not reasonable, he deserves to be criticise. This is what that took place before the tournament. He may argue that it was confidence building but even then it has to be on a reasonable basis , not based on "bullshitting". The coach must not underestimate the hockey fans. The fans get disgusted when they are promised the "heaven" and in reality they are getting "hell" by the team's performance.
I therefore stand by my earlier comment and i do hope that the junior coach is careful and thoughtful on his pre-tournament comments. Anyway I wish him the very best in his finsl leg of preparation for the Junior World Cup in June.
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1 comment:
lechaBro,
there is nothing to crow about our Juniors 6-0 victory minnows(all categories)SIN.
But if you are talking about the quality of the two matches, SIN pattern of play and formation is by far better then ours. But due to their poorly prepared Team due to financial problems of the SHF, the players are not exposed to big games conditions and players style they lost. Most of the goals were 'gift' goals eg: weak pass back, miss flicks.
Ours have travelled far and wide and if that is what we can do then woe betide us.
But the fundamental flaw with our two joint host is that FIH should not have allowed us to host, so as to qualify automatically. In so doing, FIH have put the death knell to our Hockey.
When we are thrashed by the 'big boys' the public will be turned off and that will be bad for the game.
The FIH President that allowed all this hany-panky awarding of the JWC is gone,MHF officials whom was supposed to gain from this JWC is gone. Only the SHF factor is there to accept the glory of fixing the award and to the Singapore Sports hierachy it is a feather in the cap for them to be able to have such a powerful figure in the world body to get FIH to award such a prestigious tournament to us esp to SIN.( Feather in the cap for her)
When Singapore gets thrashing by double figures, we pray that top figures of SIN will realised that the SHF figure is doing all this for her own benefit and even getting SIN humiliated does not concerned her as long as she get the limelight. Anyone who have concerned for their country's reputation and knowledge of Hockey as she claimed, will not allow SIN to automatically qualify because SIN cannot even beat Iran,Bangladesh or Sri Lanka then how to take the big boys.
We hope that MHF will learn a lesson from this and as the ones that brought this to MHF is gone no one can be accountable.
As for SIN, we hope to see that the one in SHF should be made to account for her folly and her head will roll for bringing this disgraceful display to the world stage knowing fully that we are not capable of putting a show against the World's best. Just for her own face, she will sell every body including herself.
So, your Question cannot be answered except we must pray that we will not suffer the same fate as SIN by losing by double digit.
With the present Coaching Setup, we will not be betting against it.
Heart-Pain.
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