Hockey: Getting players to think on their feet

AFTER spending seven days in quarantine, national hockey coach Arul Selvaraj returned home and immediately turned on his computer to conduct online coaching.

He is on a mission to have thinking players who can make quick decisions on the pitch in his squad.

However, to do that, he needs players to be more independent and confident, and he hopes to instil these qualities during his online coaching sessions under the Movement Control Order (MCO).

"Upon returning from Ireland, I was under quarantine for seven days, after which I immediately started online coaching.

"I want my players to be independent — from keeping their fitness up to mark to making quick decisions on the pitch without waiting for the coach to give instructions," said Arul.

Arul observed only seven days in quarantine as he had a Covid-19 swab test 48 hours before flying off from Ireland.

He completed his quarantine on Thursday.

One of the advantages in having independent players is that they can make right decisions during matches.

From the time German-born coach Paul Lissek coached Malaysia, players depended on instructions from the bench, and some became robotic.

Lissek even took the trouble to learn Bahasa Malaysia, and his first two words were 'kiri' and 'kanan'.

It enabled him to give instructions from the sidelines to his charges like playing a remote-controlled match with the players as pawns.

Following the postponement of the Malaysian Hockey League (MHL), the coaches of all three national teams, including the junior and women's squads, have gone online to guide their players.

In the second half of last year, the teams were under quarantined-based training and housed at the National Sports Council in Bukit Jalil.

Arul, Nasihin Nubli (women's project squad) and Wallace Tan (men's junior) presented their respective training programmes to the Malaysian Hockey Confederation (MHC) national team management committee recently.

"All players are under online programmes, prepared by their respective coaches.

"The MHC will decide on the next step after the MCO ends on Jan 26, depending on further announcements from the government," said MHC national team management chairman Datuk Ahmad Najmi Razak.

The MHC are also in a bind because all the planned international tournaments are in danger of being postponed, including the men and women's junior and senior World Cup qualifiers.

Arul's team are expected to start their season with the Asian Champions Trophy in Dhaka, Bangladesh on March 11-19.

But if the players and officials do not get vaccinated by then, the Malaysian government might not allow them to play for health reasons.