The Malaysian team won their initial four matches at the Champions Challenge 1 Tournament by scoring four goals.
And ironically the ended up fourth and conceded four goals in their bronze medal match against Ireland, the former team of current Malaysian coaches Paul Revington and Arul Selvaraj.
It will be fool hardy to judge Revs and Arul by one assignment, as it would be to give them plaudits had we won the tournament.
But if there is one positive coming out of this tournament, it went on to show that the coaches made the right pick in terms of players, some shunned from the international arena for the past few years.
Many in the hockey circles have not got close to understanding the impassioned plea by Tengku Abdullah Sultan Ahmad Shah to close ranks and work towards making Malaysian hockey great again. For these personalities are just power crazy. Enough of these pests.
Tengku Abdullah was saddened by the semis defeat against South Korea and he said:
"I was hoping they would clinch the third place but they slipped that as well. Korea showed that they are a worthy team inspite of losing to us in the earlier round."
On Monday the team will reassemble, this time to prepare for the Asian Champions Trophy in Doha where the likes of defending champions India, Pakistan, Malaysia, Japan, China and Oman will assemble to bragging rights of being Asia's number 1.
Malaysia open their campaign against India, and could not have asked for a tougher opponent who is displaying some of its best hockey at the ongoing Champions trophy in Melbourne.
No doubt it is heartbreaking to lose to Ireland, especially when we have never been on the podium for the Champions Challenge.
"A loss to Korea after a very poor first half where ill-discipline
cost us dearly, and a golden goal loss to Ireland does frustrate
me as I thought we had enough quality in the team to prevail in these
games," said Revington.
"However I agree that we have indeed taken big steps forward in a
very short space of time and I must give full credit to the players for
this.
"There are several areas of performance that have
been focused on - and mainly around getting the fundamentals of the game
produced consistently within the Malaysian Team. Training will be based
on these fundamentals for the initial months."
Revington said that he has yet to determine the composition of the team to Doha and it will be determined once training resumes next Monday.
We are trying to instill a consistency wrt mindset
that will drive our performance in training and in games - and I thought
we took quality steps forward pre and during CCI in this regard.
