National players not allowed to play in Razak Cup

The national players will not be released for the Razak Cup tournament which will be held at the National Hockey Stadium in Bukit Jalil from Oct 26 to Nov 4.

The Malaysian Hockey Confederation (MHC) president Tan Sri Anwar Mohd Nor, said they have decided not to release the national players for the tournament because their fitness level would drop.

“We have learnt from past experience. The 30 players in the training squad would concentrate on preparing for the Champions Trophy which will be held from Nov 29 to Dec 9 in Kuala Lumpur.

“Our priority is the Champions Trophy which is part of the preparation for next year’s Olympic qualifier,” said Anwar.

The other teams in the fray for the Champions Trophy are Olympic champions Australia, world champions Germany, Holland, Spain, South Korea, Pakistan and Britain.

National coach Sarjit Singh said that the national team would go for a one-week mental training stint in Kuching from Oct 25- 31.

“The national players need mental strength to put up a strong challenge in the tournament. Physiologist Frederick Tan will conduct the mental training,” said Sarjit, who guided the national team to win the first ever bronze medal in the recent Asia Cup in Chennai.

Sarjit said that he would also focus more on the fitness level, which was not up to the mark in the Asia Cup.

“The players need to be extremely fit to put up a strong challenge. Besides that we will be facing teams who are much stronger and ranked higher than us.

“We will start training twice a day from tomorrow to improve the fitness level,” said Sarjit.

Sarjit added that they need an all rounder who can play well and at the same time deliver penalty corner goals in the tournament.

“In the Asia Cup our penalty corner conversion rate was not that good. We only managed to score 10 penalty corner goals from the total of 32 we scored in the tournament.

“Defender Zulkifli (Rejab) is good with his penalty corner flicks but cannot sustain his form for the entire match. Another defender Baljit (Singh) has shown progress in his game but needs to improve his penalty corner flicks,” said Sarjit.

Sarjit added that his other options for taking penalty corners are midfielders Jiwa Mohan and Mohd Suffian Mohamed.

“Suffian, however, needs to improve his game if he hopes to win a place in the tournament,” said Sarjit.

Sarjit added that 18 players would be named for the Champions Trophy while the remaining 12 would be named for the Korat SEA Games squad.

“Although 16 players need to be registered for the SEA Games, the remaining four will come from the Champions Trophy squad. The four might join the players in Korat after the Champions Trophy,” said Sarjit.