The more you give, the more you get – a motto Arul can stick to

CHIEF coach A. Arulselvaraj is on the brink of joining a select few individuals who had brought the nation to the men’s hockey World Cup.

Having guided the Speedy Tigers to a runners-up finish in the Asia Cup in Jakarta in June, Arul is eyeing to get out of Pool C consisting of world No. 3 Holland, New Zealand and Chile in the 15th edition of the World Cup in Bhubaneswar and Rourkela in India from Jan 13-19.

Group winners will earn a bye to the last eight, a lofty target considering Malaysia had only once progressed beyond the group stage – when the game was still played on grass.

The semi-final appearance of the class of 1975 remains in Malaysian hockey folklore.

Arul was still a 14-month-old toddler growing up in Segamat when Datuk Ho Koh Chye coached the team in our own backyard.

Koh Chye took Malaysia to two other World Cups – Amstelveen 1973 and Buenos Aires 1978.

Arul is set to follow in Koh Chye’s footsteps along with two other local coaches – Datuk R. Yogeswaran in Bombay (1981-82) and Dharmaraj Abdullah in The Hague (2014). In the same company are three foreigners – German Volker Knapp in Utrecht (1998), Knapp’s mentor and compatriot Paul Lissek in Kuala Lumpur (2002) as well as Dutchman Roelant Oltmans in Bhubaneswar (2018).

It was Arul who netted the winner for Malaysia to beat South Africa 4-3 at Bukit Jalil to earn a ticket to Utrecht.

Unfortunately, his role was limited in the final.

“With a minute remaining, we launched a counter attack and I ran for about 20m before flicking the ball into the net. Somehow, I bundled over the keeper and fell into goal before Nor Saiful Zaini (Nasiruddin) gave me a smack on the face, telling me I had scored the winner,” Arul recalled.

Always with a mind of his own throughout his five-year stint with the national team, Arul quit the Commonwealth Games squad in 1998 in a huff, citing unjust selection as his main reason.

That left him emotionally-scarred.

But now that he is the boss, Arul is sparing no effort to help provide a merit-based high-performance environment for his players.

“The team have a set of core values in place and I have to lead by example,” he told the writer over breakfast recently.

Living life abroad – in South Africa, England and Ireland almost for the past 20 years – has helped Arul, married to former runner K. Soloseeni, realise nothing is more important than family support.

In an interview with sports channel Astro Arena, Arul revealed he got the players’ wives and girlfriends’ buy-in in order to create a healthy and unified team.

“Only through the support of family members, the individual can perform at work, which contributes greatly to harmony and unity as a team.

“We gathered the wives together over lunch in Bangi. One or two joined us online because they wanted to understand what is needed to help the players perform.

“I told them they have to help me help their husbands. If they are not eating and resting well or not in the right frame of mind, it can affect their performance. If that happens in the long run, they might lose their main source of income,” said Arul in elaborating his points disclosed in the documentary.

In his effort to make his players more cerebral, Arul has instructed on a few occasions for the players to submit video and power point presentations on the opponents.

“While it enhances their analytical skills, it gives them the opportunity to practise what they preach on the pitch,” said Arul.

With the steadying influence of team manager Datuk Mirnawan Nawawi and the support of the Malaysian Hockey Confederation’s (MHC) top leadership, Arul goes the extra mile to keep his players focused.

And he does not mind giving and sharing, material or otherwise.

“The more you give, the more you get,” said Arul as we parted ways.