Received an email from Paul Lissek who is currently helping out Australian Hockey. He has made some interesting observations that has been stated by many but somewhat MHF and NSC turn a deaf ear, for how long we will not know, but I guess if and when we fail to qualify for the World Cup, reality will sink in.
"We are one week away from our trip to New Zealand were we play the Oceania Cup or the Qualifier for WC in New Delhi 2010. It is interesting to see from my new perspective how they are preparing and focusing the opponents!
Australia team and officials are very professional. The main advantage is that players are working very liberal and independent, means with a lot of self-discipline. The players coming for individual training-sessions and following their different plan.
They train with different coaches and they also coming for individual video-sessions, sitting with a coach to discuss. The methodical principal 'players as partners' not 'players as schoolboys' makes the difference! Sometimes players working in groups on their particular issues and getting more confident to working out the important points!
I am not allowed to talk about our interior work because it is one of our principals in contract, to keep it. But I know how much you are interested about different working methods in different hockey teams in the world!
You can easy realize, why Australia is on the field much more confident and superior than others, especially Malaysia! When you would change the system of 'full-time-training' and replace it through a normal system like other countries doing to make the players work and study, the character and the responsibility and motivation of Malaysian players would improve simply!
In Australia players like Livermore can still play in National Team despite he is not training with the team but working far from Perth near Brisbane and stay with his family!
I could give you many examples and reasons."
