Malaysian hockey team needs complete preparation for the upcoming Olympics: Hockey Update
Considering the Sultan Azlan Shah Cup as the final step to head towards the 2012 London Olympics, the Malaysian men hockey team need a lot of hard-work to get themselves all set for the Olympic Qualifiers, to be held next year.
In the recent Sultan Azlan Shah Cup, they ended up last among the seven nations that had participated in the event. In accordance to the world ranking, all the teams are seeded in the top ten excluding Malaysia, which is at the 15thplace.
It was an obvious fact that the team found hard to match up the world’s finest teams in the home invitational, however the major weakness highlighted was the lack of concentration in the game.
More of their matches were lost in the last five minutes due to the fact that they failed to play under pressure and made blunders that made their winning-match slip off their hands.
Malaysian's team coach, Tai Beng Hai, said, “Yes, some of the problems are old ones and they keep cropping up. This tournament also showed how important it is to constantly have matches against top teams to gauge where we stand.”
He added, “We have several young players and they showed that they can play well. But there is a lot of hard work ahead. Players have to realise that what we do in training are all designed to get the team to play well in matches and extra effort has to be
put in as well in training.”
Malaysia only managed to win a single match against Korea by 3-1 out of their six appearances.
Beng Hai said that the reason to play the Sultan Azlan Shah Cup was not just results, but to start their preparations for the Olympic Qualifiers and it is necessary to keep the positive aspect in mind.
According to the coach, they were completely aware of the problems the team had and with no illusionary prospects they will take every step crucially and all the upcoming matches will be taken seriously.
Beng Hai informed that for the Sultan Azlan Shah Cup, the team had only 14 days of training. The other most obvious reason for such a poor display was the absence of the key players Mohamed Amin Rahim and Azreen Rizal, due to their injuries. Moreover, the
Malaysian skipper Mohamed Madzli Ikmar also got injured in the second match and was ruled out of the competition thereon.
Like the talented youngsters Azammi Adabi, Firhan Azhaari and Mohamed Izzat Rahim, there were some more such young talent that were not picked out for the Ipoh tournament. However, Beng Hai admitted to try to allow those players to debut in the upcoming
matches. All the team requires is more practice and matches.
Malaysia team is getting set to play their next assignment that is a four-nation tournament in Moscow including Russia, Ukraine and South Africa to whom they will compete next month.
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