THERE is an urgent need to produce hockey goalkeeping coaches among teachers, especially in sports schools.
In order to produce more internationally-recognised goalkeepers in the near future, our mindset for the coaching set-up needs to be changed.
Nowadays, many international teams work hard at making their penalty corner assaults as deadly as possible. In fact, flickers are groomed in the process to that very end.
To ease the danger of conceding goals, quality goalkeepers are needed to counter this alarming trend and produce better results.
As I mentioned earlier, a goalkeeper’s performance during a game can literally decide how a match turns out for the entire team.
After all the effort put into scoring goals, a goalkeeper cannot afford to concede ‘soft goals’ on a regular basis for fear of demoralising players on the outfield.
As it’s a specialised position, not everyone can be a goalkeeper; besides being endowed with the talent, one needs to possess character, bravery, great reflexes, good physicality, fast decision-making skills and a calm demeanour.
Malaysia has produced some internationally-acclaimed goalkeepers over the years.
Those days, when the game was played on grass, Malaysia had the late Peter van Huizen,, the late Datuk Ho Koh Chye, Khairuddin Zainal, Zulkifli Abbas and Azraai Zain.
Recent names that have shone on plastic pitches, such as Ahmad Fadzil Zainal Abidin, Mohd Sayuti Abdul Samat, Ahmad Soffian Zulkifli, Paul Lopez, Roslan Jamaluddin, Nasihin Nubli, S. Kumar, Hamdan Hamzah and M. Nadarajan, have done so for the national team.
At the moment, there are four goalkeepers in the national team training squad under coach A. Arul Selvaraj.
They are Mohammad Hairi Abdul Rahman, Adrian Andy Albert, Muhamad Shafie Sahrom and Muhammad Hafizuddin Othman. They are talented players and with some help, are more than capable of improvement.
Under the Malaysian Hockey Confederation (MHC) coaching structure, Kumar is handling the goalkeeping aspect of the training whereas Roslan does the same for the national women's squad and national juniors.
Currently, Nasihin is the coach for the women's squad.
In a bid to improve them and ensure that they are better prepared, MHC is putting in great effort to assist the goalkeepers.
However, we can still do more at the grassroots level by having specific goalkeeping coaches at sports schools.
I still remember Pakistani star Shahid Ali Khan and Dutchman Martijn Drijver, who has a hockey goalkeeping academy, were brought in to assist goalkeepers in the training sessions for the national squad. Shahid came to help out in 2007 while Drijver arrived five years later.
In what became an illustrious international career, Kumar was coached and trained by Drijver, who was known as ‘Goalie Guru’. Having begun his national training back in 1999, Kumar retired at 40 on February 20 after amassing 321 caps.
He helped Malaysia to win two silver medals at the 2010 and 2018 Asian Games in Guangzhou and Jakarta-Palembang respectively. He was also part of the runners-up team at the 2017 Asia Cup in Dhaka.
Kumar was named Goalkeeper for the 2010 Asian All-Stars along with Salman Akbar of Pakistan. He was also awarded Best Goalkeeper for the 2009 Asia Cup.
Especially in the international scene, goalkeepers need more time to develop their skills; the more matches they play, the more exposure they get ─ especially on the big stage ─ the better they become.
However, this does not come easy as teams always field the best ─ their Number Ones ─ in official tournaments. Reserves, on the other hand, only get the chance during friendlies or test matches.
However, there was this one special case involving rookie Roslan's success after taking over the more experienced Nasihin as the Number One for the 1998 Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur.
There were three goalkeepers in the training squad then. They were Roslan, Nasihin and Izwan Suhardi.
German Paul Lissek, chief coach at the time, decided to give the 20-year-old Roslan the opportunity to play some tough matches as part of his preparation for the Games.
And Roslan did perform well enough to be the Number One at the Games, and well enough to help Malaysia win that memorable silver medal!
All and all, it may prove to be a challenge, but undoubtedly, we can work our way up to having more quality goalkeepers in the near future.
Here's a suggestion: how about our very own hockey goalkeeping academy? It would be great if relevant parties can make this a reality for Malaysia. ─ The Vibes, 18 December, 2020
