No amount of excuses can justify Malaysia's 5-1 defeat at the hands of Japan in their first friendly match.
The fact that Japan raced to a 5-0 lead before Malaysia pulled one back shows that the hosts treated the series of matches against their higher ranked opponents more seriously then Malaysia who obviously thought that this was just another friendly.
Which brings me back to a conversation I had with a former international last week who chided the national Football team for giving too much respect to Timor Leste prior to the matches. The exact words were " we should talk about hammering them."
My word of caution then was that things have changed, and there is no such thing as a pushover team anymore.
In return I asked him what if Malaysia was to lose to Japan in Hockey, he retorted rightfully " stop talking rubbish."
But the inevitable has happened and I would like to see his face at the next Hockey Senate Meeting in a weeks time.
Coming back to this defeat, there were a litany of excuses offered by the coach - from the fact that they tried players out of position, had several players missing from the team and so forth.
But the bottom line is we had no business losing by such a margin. Defeat is acceptable but a trashing should never be be condoned.
True one might say that this is a one off thing that might occur but our image has been tarnished by minnows of world Hockey.
Remember that Japan is hosting the 2020 Olympics and the new regime has time and again reminded us that hockey will make it to that Olympics.
But with such results we can only fear the worst.
I am a firm believer that we cannot be expected to win each time we take the field, for if that was the case we would be World Champs.
But being trashed by Japan? How on earth can i stand up to those highly paid foreigners who omitted Hockey from the Podium Program and tell them to " stick it up their rear" for that ludicrous decision if we lose or rather get trashed by Japan!
The sooner some that occupy the seats of the throne realise that a collective effort is required to make Hockey great again, in the words of Republican presidential designate candidate Donald Trump, the better we will get.
Wake up before another bomb is dropped on us in Japan.
