IN terms of job security, the relevant body needs to encourage corporate organisations and government bodies, including uniformed units, to take better care of national athletes whose sporting days are over.
As a policymaker and prime mover, they should endorse a working paper on ‘mechanisms’ to help our national athletes, so they have something to fall back on once they leave the sporting arena.
In order to protect and assist athletes to build long-standing careers past their playing days, these athletes need gainful employment during their involvement in sports.
The athletes may end up with nothing to do if they aren’t able to secure jobs while in the sports scene.
In an industry where professionalism is the key objective, my idea may be seen as a step in the wrong direction by those in support of it.
Despite this, we often hear of national athletes not having much of a direction after their sporting career is over.
Some cases have been reported by the Press but by this time, it may already be too late.
We must face the fact that not all players will turn professional. As such, we need to think of what happens after they stop playing their respective sport.
I believe that corporate organisations and government bodies, including the uniformed units, should convert their sports departments into marketing tools to foster a particular sport or allocate a budget for the sport of their choice so they can offer more career opportunities for our athletes.
This is not a critique of anyone per say but a thought shared in consideration of our former national athletes in terms of their future development within the sports industry as business proprietors, entrepreneurs and coaches; we should not discourage athletes from doing their own thing once their sporting careers come to an end.
To this day, Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB) does offer employment opportunities to hockey players although those engaged as contractual players will have to look at other openings if their contract fails to get renewed.
On the other hand, Malaysian Hockey League teams, such as UniKL and Maybank, still employ players although many others who used to hire talented players as employees are in rapid demise.
Back in the day, there were more inter-bank competitions in athletics, football, badminton and more. In fact, many of the banks went ‘crazy’ with the introduction of the Malaysia Hockey League in 1987.
Maybank, Public Bank, Bank Bumiputra, United Asian Bank (UAB), United Malayan Banking Corporation Berhad (UMBC), Perwira Habib Bank and Bank Simpanan Nasional (BSN) were some of the notable players in the sport.
Among the national hockey players who made it great whilst in the employ of banks were notable figures such as Stephen van Huizen, Wallace Tan, Colin Sta Maria, Michael Chew, M.A. Sambu and Paul Lopez.
As bank employees, they didn’t have to worry about what was going to happen to them once they stopped playing as they had a career with their respective bank.
However, after the economic turmoil of the late 90s, subsequent bank mergers resulted in a decrease of sports departments in the country.
Those days, The Royal Malaysian Police had a track record of employing national hockey players with names like Tan Sri P. Alagendra, Datuk Seri N. Sri Shanmuganathan, Datuk KT Rajan, Datuk Ow Soon Kooi as well as Mohinder Singh coming into the picture.
In recent years, the Force has hired players like Razie Abdul Rahim, who is with the current national squad, and before that, they had Nabil Fiqri Mohd Noor, Kelvinder Singh, Baljit Singh and Jivan Mohan, among others.
Goalkeeper Farah Ayuni Yahya, who was with the national women's squad in recent years, is also with the Royal Malaysian Police.
The Armed Forces were also playing their part back in the day with names like Jagjit Singh and Inderjit Singh.
During my time, we were fortunate to have Yayasan Hoki Malaysia (YHM), which did a lot to help players by offering scholarships, which in turn saw many players becoming doctors, engineers, accountants and so on.
Calvin Fernandez, Bryan Siva, S.Kuhan, R. Shankar, Nor Saiful Zaini Nasiruddin, K. Logan Raj, K.Keevan Raj, I. Vickneswaran and myself included were among its many proud recipients.
Nowadays, the Sports Ministry — with the help of the Education Ministry — has been doing an excellent job of awarding foundation-level scholarships to sports school students who score the minimum credits required by universities.
All said and done, it is just as important today, as it was back then, that we continue to find new ways to help our national athletes secure their future long after their glory days have come and gone. — The Vibes, 4 December, 2020
