Back in 2012, Australian, Neil Hawgood was due to take over the Malaysian team but the deal fell through and Malaysian Hockey Confederation (MHC) decided to appoints Paul Revington as coach instead. Over the last couple of weeks, the former member of Australia's 1988 Olympic team was speculated to fill up the hot seat again. Yesterday, it was announced by MHC that they had decided to that Tai Beng Hai will remain as coach for now and Hawgood will be employed as a consultant.
Although MHC senior vice-president Datuk Nur Azmi Ahmad said Hawgood will be re-designated after their AGM, the announcement still come as a surprise. For me, do we really need a consultant for this sport? Can't those people inside MHC think how to develop the sport anymore? Why everything in this country requires consultant nowadays? Lembab sangat ke otak orang kita?
If the reason is not to disrupt the preparation for World Hockey League (Round Two), then to me it wasn't a good decision either. We should set our priority right - the Olympic and World Cup should always be the target. Therefore, this is a good time for Neil Hawgood to start work and MHC can appoint Tai Beng Hai as he assistant since Tai knows the players well. Even without Tai, Hawgood should have little problem to lead our national team to victory in Singapore since there are no strong teams yet in this round. It should be a walk in the park.
Perhaps either MHC or National Sports Council (NSC) is not really convince with Hawgood? Maybe they have other preferred candidate but hasn't manage to negotiate the terms yet. Neil Hawgood's CV isn't really impressive with no major tournament win so far. But how care! In the past, we have brought top coaches like Paul Lissek and Terry Welsh but still we haven't win anything. It just having a "mat salleh" coach can sometime have good effect on the players because it is our nature to respect them.
So, MHC please allow Neil Hawgood to take over as our senior coach and see how good this guy is. The important thing is his salary is within our budget with option to tear up his contract if he screwed up!
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