KUALA LUMPUR: It’s getting from bad to worse - the national hockey team’s performance, that is.
The team went to South Korea last week for two friendlies against club sides in preparation for the Incheon Asian Games.
The outcome? They lost 2-0 to Incheon City in the first friendly and drew 1-1 with the National Korean Sports University (NKSU) in the other.
What makes the two results even more disappointing is that these two club sides had no national players at all.
The national hockey team have been on a downward spiral since the World Cup, where they finished last after losing all six matches in The Hague in June. Then, at the recent Glasgow Commonwealth Games, they suffered an embarrassing 4-2 loss to Trinidad and Tobago en route to a seventh placing.
Judging by these results, can Malaysia even qualify for the semi-finals at the Asiad – let alone win it?
National coach A. Arulselvaraj, certainly thinks the national players can rise to the occasion.
“Yes, we lost to the club sides ... but we created many scoring chances. The results (of the friendlies) don’t matter as we went to Incheon to see how well the players can combine and also to get used to the pitch,” said Arulselvaraj, who also blamed the pitch conditions for the team’s poor results.
“We also didn’t have the services of defender Faiz (Helmi Jali) in both the friendlies after he suffered a shoulder injury while training in Incheon.”
The World Cup meltdown and the loss to Trinidad at the Glasgow Commonwealth Games seem to have affected their confidence, according to Arulselvaraj, who now has two weeks to help the players turn things around for the Asiad.
There are 20 players in the training squad and four will be dropped before the team leave for Incheon on July 17.
Malaysia, who were silver medallists in the 2010 Guangzhou Asiad, are in Group A with South Korea, Japan, Bangladesh and Singapore in Incheon.
Defending champions Pakistan are drawn with arch rivals India, Oman and Sri Lanka.
For a team low on morale and confidence, it’s surprising that the Malaysian Hockey Confederation (MHC) are targeting them to qualify for the final in Incheon.
The Asian Games gold medallist will gain an automatic berth to the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics.
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