Skip to main content

HOCKEY: MHL needs a makeover

HE Malaysian Hockey League (MHL) could be re-branded next year to attract more teams for the annual competition which is on the decline due to poor response.

Malaysian Hockey Confederation (MHC) secretary Johari Aziz said a re-branding exercise will likely be done to make the league more attractive next year.

"The league has potential but we need to upgrade it. We could change the format or invite foreign teams to make it more exciting and competitive," said Johari after the MHL team managers' meeting at the National Hockey Stadium in Bukit Jalil yesterday.

The league, which began in the late 1980s, used to attract a large participation but of late, teams have been staying away due to budget constraint.

In 2010, 16 teams played in the league but only 14 registered for the competition last season. The upcoming season, which starts on Saturday, has attracted only 13 clubs despite MHC's move to increase the prize money from RM350,000 to RM410,000 for the six-week competition which ends on Oct 10.

"There will be no automatic promotion and relegation in the two-tier league as lower-ranked teams are not good enough," Johari added.

"We will look at the standard of the top finishers in Division One before granting them a possible promotion into next season's Premier League. We, however, hope the increase of prize money will make the league competitive."

Only the top four teams in the Premier League, comprising defending champions KL Hockey Club (KLHC), Sapura, Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB), Maybank, Universiti Kuala Lumpur (UniKL) and Nur Insafi-PHA, will qualify for the TNB Cup (overall title), unlike previous seasons, where the top two in Division One completed the quarter-final field.

Sapura, Maybank and Nur Insafi have signed foreign players while the rest will depend on locals. Pakistan international Muhd Imran and South Korea's former Olympian Lee Jung Seon will play for Sapura while Shakeel Abbasi and Mohd Waqas (both Pakistanis) together with Kiwi Aiden Mitchell have signed with Maybank. Nur Insafi have yet to confirm their foreign signings.

As for Division One teams, comprising Armed Forces, Bukit Jalil Sports School (BJSS), Politeknik-KPT, Universiti Teknoloji Mara (UiTM), Johor HA, TNB-Thunderbolts and PST-Uniten-KPT, they will play in the newly-introduced President Cup. Johor HA have signed five Qatari internationals for their campaign.

MHC also made changes to the league's opening day fixture after admitting a mistake in drawing out the wrong teams for Saturday's Charity Shield match.

KLHC, last season's league and TNB Cup winners, were initially drawn to play TNB, the TNB Cup runners-up, but according to competition rules if a team win both titles, their opponents in the Charity Shield should be the league runners-up.

"We made a mistake. KLHC will now play last year's league runners-up Sapura," Johari said. By Ajitpal Singh

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Malaysian junior athletes are just too ‘lembik’

Saya setuju. We are working on more coaches! “ @ManOlimpik : Malaysian junior athletes are just too ‘lembik’ http://t.co/7D7wmHWaNy ” — Khairy Jamaluddin (@Khairykj) June 10, 2014 The benchmark. Can our junior athletes train as hard as Malaysia's world No.1 badminton player, Lee Chong Wei? “IT IS okay lah. The training is not too bad lah. I will try lah … Wah, so hard lah today.” These are some of the common statements I hear from our juniors nowadays. It is not only in badminton. It is the easy-going, laid-back attitude and lack of competitiveness at grassroots level that we have problems producing quality players. I have travelled quite a bit. After ending my decade-long career with the national team, I went to play in the league in Europe. It’s different there. The European athletes know what they want. And they do it with real focus. Even the young ones possess admirable self-control and show a high level of commitment. During my time in the ...
12 comments
Read more

Organising Major Sports Events Can Inspire Sports Culture Among The People - Khairy

PUTRAJAYA, June 5 (Bernama) -- Organising major sports events can help inspire sports culture among the people and ensure a healthy lifestyle said Youth and Sports Minister Khairy Jamaluddin. Khairy said the Tour of Malaysia cycling race organised since 1963, for example, can encourage more people to take the sport in a more competitive way or just for recreation purposes. "A study carried out by a world renown medical journal, The Lancet, revealed that 61 percent of adults in Malaysia do not engage themselves in active sports. "A study by the Health Ministry revealed that only 25 percent of Malaysians exercise," he said in his speech when launching the 2013 Tour of Malaysia (Jelajah Malaysia) at the Youth and Sports Ministry, here, Wednesday. "Cycling, though not as popular here as in countries like Denmark, the activity is becoming popular among the people as can be seen through an increase in sale of bicycles for recreation," he sa...
Post a Comment
Read more

Badminton: Fans rooting for all-Malaysian semis

Reports: RAJES PAUL KUALA LUMPUR: The home fans will be rooting for an all-Malaysian men’s singles semi-final between Lee Chong Wei and Liew Daren. But Chong Wei is more fancied to advance than Daren in quarter-final matches against Indonesian Simon Santoso and Dane Peter Gade-Christensen respectively at the Putra Stadium in Bukit Jalil today. Yesterday, Chong Wei defeated Vietnamese Nguyen Tien Minh 21-9, 18-21, 21-7 in a second-round match that saw the world number one struggling to adapt to the draught in the stadium in the second game. And Daren continued a fairy tale run in his home Open, blowing away a toothless Hsueh Hsuan-yi of Taiwan 21-14, 21-12. Although Choong Wei had to slog for the win over Tien Minh, the top seed and defending champion felt that he was playing better by the day. “I got off to a good start but found it hard to cope with the draught. I tried to catch up after losing my momentum but that did not happen and I decided to conserve energy for ...
11 comments
Read more