Murali has a month before he plots juniors’ World Cup challenge

It will be a testing time for newly appointed national junior coach V. Muralidharan over the next one month as he looks into drawing up the programme for the team towards the 2009 Junior World Cup.

He begins work as the team's chief coach today and his first task is to prepare the players for an eight-nation tournament scheduled for Jan 17-27 at the National Hockey Stadium in Bukit Jalil here.

Muralidharan said that he would come up with a programme for the team after the tournament.

“It is still early to say what plans I have for the team. I need to look at the players I have first and the next one month will give me a clearer picture on what needs to be done. The eight-nation tournament will be a good indicator of the work we have at hand,” he said.

A total of 31 players below 19-years-old will report for training today. They were selected by the National Sports Council (NSC) development director, Paul Lissek, last week from a list of 50 players.

The German has been in charge of the team for the last one month while Muralidharan was with the squad for the recent SEA Games.

The team have friendly matches lined up for them from Jan 4-13 against an Australian junior side from New South Wales.

“We have organised seven matches against them. The team for the eight-nation meet will be selected after the friendly matches,” said Muralidharan.

The teams invited for the eight-nation meet are Germany, Australia, Holland, India, Pakistan, South Korea and New Zealand.

The Malaysian Hockey Federation (MHF) have given Muralidharan the task to mould the team for the 2009 Junior World Cup Finals. The former Bukit Jalil Sports School (BJSS) coach takes over from Tai Beng Hai, who quit last month citing family matters after having handled the team for a year.

Muralidharan added that they would have to start from scratch as all the players who were in their 20s had been left out even though they were still eligible to play in the Junior Asia Cup next year, which is a qualifying tournament for the Junior World Cup Finals.

“We do not have to qualify as we are the joint hosts for the Finals with Singapore. We have thus decided that only players who qualify to play in 2009 make up our training squad. And those who were from the previous squad will form the core group of my team,” he said.

The players in the squad are also expected to go into full-time training from next year.