Malaysian Hockey Federation picks up mixed squad for Moscow Tournament: Hockey Update
In a bid to show competitive performances, Malaysian Hockey Federation (MHF) has picked up a mixed squad comprising of fresh talent and senior players for the upcoming Four-Nation Moscow Tournament.
The decision was taken after some changes have been made into the competitive teams. World Champions Argentina and South Africa opted to miss the tournament and Belarus and Uzbekistan were replaced with the missing squads. The four-nation tournament comprised
of Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan and Malaysia will be held from June 22 to June 26, 2011.
Besides Project 2013 players, three senior names will also be part of the squad that will contest the event.
K. Dharmaraj, the coach of the Project 2013 Team while speaking to the media stated that he had just been informed about the changes in the event thus they had decided to select a mixed team for the four-nation event. He further stated, “I will be fielding
16 players, some of who played in the recent Australia and New Zealand Tours, and three senior players who will be dropped from the European Tour,” said Project 2013, Coach K. Dharmaraj.”
It is vital to mention here that the Project 2013 squad faced four times the Australian hockey team, but they lost three games while drawing another. They were defeated by, 9-1, 2-1, and 7-2 while drew the game at 5-5. In the recent tour to New Zealand,
they were overwhelmed by eight goals, 8-0 in the hands of visiting team. However, they revved up and drew the next game at 2-2. Both teams won one game each in the last two contests.
The coach added that he picked up half of team’s players, played the New Zealand-Australia Tourney, for Under-18 Singapore event while remaining will be part of the team for Moscow Four-Nation event. Commenting on the team’s performances in the New Zealand-Australia
trip, there were a couple of reasons behind the failures. Out of two, one reason was that they found plenty of chances in all the games, but they could have capitalised on the gifted chances. However, the other team received much fewer chances, but exploited
all of them successfully.
The other reason was that they did not have impressive goalies during the tour that left much impact in the results.
Dharmaraj was of the opinion that they should have played games against matured teams in order to improve their performances. He was of the opinion that they would take Uzbekistan and Belarus down to face the favourite, Russia, in the final game. The coach
also expressed hopes saying that the players will bring improvement in weak areas in order to finish the game on a high note.
Tags: