KL University (UniKL) coach Darren Smith the urged his team to play simple but effective hockey in order to achieve an outstanding position in Malaysian Hockey League.
Smith, who is the New Zealand’s national assistant coach, is very passionate to take his team to lead.
“We have a good combination of established foreign players, experienced locals and talented youngsters in the squad. After several training sessions, the players gelled well as a team,” said Smith.
In addition to national players, UniKL has variety of foreign talents in its squad – four foreigners include two Kiwis and two Germans.
The two Kiwi players included are one goalkeeper Steve Graham and defender Richard Patrick while Germans include Kevin Lim and Phillip Stahr.
Other than these, UniKL has also hired two former internationals – forward S. Selvaraju and mid-fielder Robert Alcantra for giving team a new boost.
Smith not only guides the team with latest techniques rather he keeps on giving a continuous feedback for their improvement. He told that the training sessions have left a good impact on all the players and a great improvement has been observed in all of
them.
“The fundamentals of the team are OK. The players just need to pass the ball around and make the ball work for them. The local players are very skilful but they need to know when to use their skills and their decision-making ability needs to be polished,”
she said.
After assessing the team’s performance, he explained that all the players are aware of basics of the game they just need to work on ball passing. As far as local players are concerned although they are skilful but the only thing they are lacking is their
decision making ability which is yet to be worked out.
Last year UniKL finished sixth and last in Malaysian Hockey League Premier Division, but this time Smith showed a great hope for better performance from the team to achieve a splendid result.
Smith expressed high hope and said that he has target to finish in top four in the league and he wanted his squad to achieve the level of other established teams. He said that it would really be a great pleasure for him if the team meets the set target this
season.
Malaysian Hockey League starts on 17 December.
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