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Sports

Saturday August 22, 2009

Project team only bright spot in a dreary Razak Cup championship

By S. RAMAGURU

KUALA LUMPUR: The performance of the Project 2013 team was the only saving grace of an otherwise forgetful 47th Razak Cup hockey championship, which ended on Thursday.

The tournament culminated with Malacca being crowned champions for only the second time in the series.

Still, the overall performance of all the teams – bar that of the Project 2013 team – was bad.

And the less said about the Malaysian Hockey Federation’s (MHF) organisation of the tournament the better.

If not for the Project 2013 squad’s participation, the tournament would have been a total flop.

The team, comprising players aged below 18 and who are being earmarked for the 2013 Junior World Cup, were like a breath of fresh air to the tournament – upstaging the more fancied teams to finish as runners-up to Malacca.

They have a lot of potential and, given the short period of training, have clearly matured into a good outfit.

But, as many coaches pointed out, the challenge now will be to keep their form going and grooming them into a top-notch unit.

Project coach K. Dharmaraj said they were still trying to identify the talents among the 36 players in the training squad.

“But I can see we have good potential. They have played in just two local tournaments so far and have improved tremendously.

“They are not the finished product yet. There are still a number of players we have not fielded and this will be done in stages,” he said.

The Project team also played in the Under-23 meet last month and finished third.

The move to expose the youngsters to local tournaments is good but they need to be given a comprehensive programme with specific targets.

For example, the MHF must set them certain targets in all the tournaments they compete in and assess their performances to ensure they are heading in the right direction.

With the states also keen on roping in these youngsters, MHF should come up with a clear-cut ruling to avoid teams from ‘fighting’ for the players.

As for the tournament, the MHF should not have crammed all the matches over eight days, with some teams having to play five days in a row.

The MHF’s decision to hold the tournament at three different venues also posed a problem to the teams.

The Razak Cup is the premier state tournament and the MHF should treat it as such.

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