Hockey Round-Up Gossip

1.Malaysian Women Hockey Team.

Mutiny! Yes, that was what happened with the women's national team. After a disastrous performance at the recent Women World Cup hockey qualifier, the ladies decided they had enough of their coach particular with his "language", as he was preparing them for the Commonwealth and Asian Games for later in the year.

This coach seemed to have "Lady luck" for nearly a decade and can be regarded as Malaysia's most unsuccessful coach. Prior to being with the ladies' team he was the coach of the Malaysian Juniors for the 2001 Tasmanian Junior World Cup. The performance there was so pathetic that we were literally one of the worst teams at the tournament.

Despite this he was given a "life line" to be assistant coach to the ladies team and after the resignation of the foreign Indian coach he was elevated as the chief coach. Mind you without an FIH coaching certificate he was yet again entrusted with a high performance national team. It is probably the "decision makers" at NSC and Women's hockey, who must have had very high regard for him or maybe there are not enough coaches in Malaysia to choose from. The decision making process seems to be highly "mystifying" especially when a person lacks the success profile and the appropriate qualification and is still given to coach high performance teams. Surely, there must be a story to this?

Some say the mutiny was orchestrated bya certain official and i do not think it is proper to state where the person originated. Apparently the person is well known to the hockey and also sporting circle and the said personality had meetings with the players. At this stage it is still a rumour but knowing the person it may not be beyond such an individual's activity.

Now there is a move to replace the ladies coach, however his "Lady's luck" is still shining for he maybe offered the post of coach under the "Pelapis" programme for the ladies development project. All cannot be that bad for the coach as he still would enjoy the various perks that come with an "outstation" based coach which is generously offered by NSC. I do hope there would not be mutinies brewing in the future with the ladies development teams too.

This compromising outlook of NSC and the Ladies hockey in not having people with the right qualification and appropriate success profile for a coaching job shows the short-sighted outlook and how the resources are wasted. In such instances Sports Administrators do not work in the best interest of sports on a meritocracy basis with careful planning embodying the principles of excellence.. Until that comes into play, sports would continue suffering such disastrous fate.


2. Games played by KL off the hockey ground.

2 incidents in a week which involves Kuala Lumpur hockey, makes me wonder whether the administrators of hockey in KL are also exponents of the "Machiavellian" principle ie "the end justifies the means".

Mind you, here we are talking about sports and if it is wrong it must be reported at the earliest and rectified as far as possible, without having to be disruptive.. Unfortunately the desire to win and carry the titles created a zealous manipulative thinking combined with the greed for glamour which forced hockey administrators to undertake matters beyond the very spirit of sports.

In Sukma hockey, KL dropped a Project 2013 player based on a "bias" selection process taking account of "connections" of certain players based on their parents. This discarded young player then went to train with Malacca and KL had knowledge of it.

In fact KL was trying to get the player back or even recommend him to another State but not for Malacca, who were in the same pool as them. Unable to "stomach" that the discarded player was playing for Malacca, KL decided that they would protest on the ground that they had not released the player. The maneuvering and manipulation to "kill" the young boy's opportunity to play in Sukma was more to do with a "fear factor" of KL hockey administrators feeble mind that Malacca would be a stronger team.

Malacca did drill home the point when on Sunday they thrashed KL by 5-1. Maybe KL was right and when they decided to do whatever possible to disqualify the young player, they were not successful. The point being the hockey administrators of KL were "Machiavellian".

In another incident where the KL Under 12 girls became champion by default when their opponent Kelantan was disqualified for registering an over-aged player using another person's identity. KL girls were defeated 4-1 and on protest they were awarded the game. The action to disqualify Kelantan was right but to award the game to KL may set a precedent for the future, where calculative officials may take advantage of similar situation.

Sources indicate that KL was aware that such a player was over-aged but did not protest before the game. The idea was to take an "insurance" on the game just in case they lost. They did lose the game but called on their "insurance" ie to protest on the over-aged player. Had they done it before the game there was no guarantee they would be champion.

Assuming in such instance if the Malaysian Schools decided to disqualify Kelantan as champion and still maintain KL as runner-up, then in the future such "Machiavellian" tactics may not be adopted, for it would make no sense to take "insurance" by not reporting the incident before the game until it is over..