The Project 2013 Squad, who are in Moscow in place of the senior side, were defeated in their two matches in the Four Nation Invitational Tournament.
Since the official MHF Website does not carry the reports nor results of the various national teams progress in overseas tournaments, be it the Europe Tour by the senior squad, the Moscow Tournament by the 2013 squad or the U18 team at the AHF Cup just across the causeway in Singapore, this blog will attempt to keep hockey lovers abreast with the happenings all over the globe as so far as Malaysian hockey fortunes are concerned.
Lets start with the Moscow Invitational Tournament. In the first match, the 2013 squad were beaten 7-2 by Azerbaijan.
Mohd Nor Faez Ibrahim scored the two Malaysian goals via penalty corners.
The Project 2013 Team lost their second match 7-3 with Faez scoring twice through penalty corners while the other goal was scored by Azlan Misron, the senior side discard.
"The players played their hearts out but were let down by poor defending and goalkeeping," said manager Mirnawan Nawawi when contacted in Moscow.
"We have a problem in goalkeeping and need to work on it. It looks like our goalkeepers are just too weak.
"We hope that the team will bounce back in the two remaining matches."
Malaysia will take on Ukraine in their final preliminary round match on Saturday before playing in the 3/4th placing match on Sunday.
Other results : Russia 6 Ukraine 1: Azerbaijan 3 Ukraine 4.
Meanwhile a blunder by those responsible for booking the senior side flight tickets resulted in the team having to fork out over 800 Euro for their trip from Amsterdam to Barcelona.
Regulations in place allow each passenger one piece of luggage weighing not more then 23 kilos and the team had 15 pieces of extra luggage. So was it the MHF or NSC to blame? And word has it that the cost of each ticket for the Europe Tour was around RM12,000 per player.
Moving on to the National Under 18 Squad who made the semis and will play Singapore tomorrow, a match where this blogger will be present.
Coach K. Gobinathan has lamented on the fact that his players are tired after playing non stop hockey, from the MJHL to the Down Under Tour to the National Under 21 Tournament in Johor Baru last week.
But who is to blame for a calendar that is so jam tight? And why was there no planning? And has anyone forgot that there is such a word as periodisation?
It all points to one place - those who make decisions in MHF for they have obviously failed.
