Coach Sarjit plans to retain squad for long-term preparations

National hockey coach Sarjit Singh does not plan to overhaul the senior team despite their failure at the Olympic qualifiers in Japan.

He said the attention would focus on the preparations for the 2010 World Cup and the 2012 Olympics.



“The players will not be dropped. We will keep the same team of 33 players in training and embark on the long-term preparations.

“Having said that I want to prepare a team that can gain an automatic berth to both these big tournaments without having to go through another qualifying tournament. That must be our target,” said Sarjit.

Failures at a qualifying meet are becoming a familiar story for Malaysian hockey. This is the third straight qualifying tournament in which the Malaysians have failed to make the cut.

The first was at the 2004 Madrid qualifiers for the Athens Olympic Games. Then it was the 2006 World Cup qualifiers in China. And they missed out on the Beijing Olympic Games after finishing third in Japan over the weekend.

“I have no plans to drop any player. Senior players can make up their own minds about retirement. They are still an asset to the team and they showed in Japan that they could still guide our younger players.

“Players like S. Kuhan, Mohamed Amin Rahim and Mohamed Madzli Ikmar are good enough to play and they can stay as long as they can follow our programme.”

Sarjit said that there are a few reasons why they failed in Japan. But he admitted that two-time world champions Germany were a class above the other teams and it was a formidable task from the beginning.

The Malaysians ended the round robin group with two wins, two draws and a defeat. They missed out on a place in the final when they drew the last match 3-3 with Japan.

But the match, which put paid to the Malaysia hopes was the 4-4 draw with Italy. It could have been a different scenario had Malaysia won the match.

“That is true as we had some erratic moment in the tournament where our players did not play to their potential. The finishing was bad and this contributed to the hard matches against weaker teams. The forward line was supposed to be our strongest but yet they failed.”

For the record Germany won the qualifying tournament to earn the last berth to Beijing.

The players will return today and will be given a break before starting their training for the Sultan Azlan Shah Cup from May 8-18 in Ipoh.