Monday July 6, 2009
Good reason for MHF to quickly form national B team
KUALA LUMPUR: The Malaysian Hockey Federation (MHF) have good reason to form the national B team immediately.
This will allow the team to prepare for the inaugural South-East Asia (SEA) hockey championships, which will be held in Bangkok from Sept 26-Oct 4.
Malaysia have agreed to take part in the tournament, which will see at least five men’s teams in the fray. The others are Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia and Brunei. For the women’s competition, three teams have signed up — Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand.
The Asian Hockey Federation (AHF) competitions committee secretary, D. Mathavan, said yesterday that the championships were introduced to ensure that teams in the region had a regular event.
“Hockey is not a compulsory sport in the SEA Games. It depends on the hosts and it’s out of the Laos Games programme in December,” he said.
“Thailand have agreed to host this new championships and it will be held each time hockey is out of the SEA Games. For the inaugural tournament, we are looking at one or two other countries to take part as well.”
Mathavan added that the idea of the SEA championships was mooted some years back but it did not get the support.
“Thailand are working very hard to ensure everything is in place this time. We hope to make it a six-team event for men and at least four for women,” he said.
Meanwhile, Malaysia have withdrawn from the girls’ Under-18 Asia Cup tournament, which will be held in Guangzhou from July 18-26.
Mathavan said that Malaysia cited the A (H1N1) flu as the reason for the late withdrawal.
“We are told that there is travel restriction in place and Malaysia will not compete in the tournament.
“It will now be a seven-team affair,” he said.
The teams in the fray are China, South Korea, India, Japan, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Pakistan.
Mathavan said the tournament was also a qualifying event for the Youth Olympics next year.
For the boys, the qualifying tournament will be held in Myanmar in November.
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