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

Ex-coach's jail sentence cut to a year

PUTRAJAYA: The Court of Appeal yesterday sentenced former athletics coach C. Ramanathan to 12 months' jail for molesting two junior athletes 19 years ago. A three-man bench led by Datuk Mohd Hishamudin Mohd Yunus unanimously dismissed Ramanathan's appeal against conviction, but varied the jail sentence of four years to a year, which was to run concurrently. Following yesterday's ruling, Ramanathan, 75, a former teacher, walked out a free man as he had served 10 months in Kajang Prison. Convicts get one-third remission for good behaviour while in prison. However, he will lose his pension. Hishamudin, who sat with Datuk Abdul Wahab Patail and Datuk Linton Albert, said the court found no merit to overturn the conviction. "However, in reducing the sentence, we considered Ramanathan's age and the long years the appeal has taken." Deputy public prosecutor Awang Armadajaya Awang Mahmud submitted that then High Court judge Tan Sri Abdull Hamid E...
2 comments
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

Rajagobal Let Off The Hook

PETALING JAYA, April 24 (Bernama) -- National head coach Datuk K. Rajagobal was let off the hook by the Football Association of Malaysia's (FAM) Disciplinary Committee after finding no evidence that he had violated FAM's Article 88, as claimed. FAM Disciplinary Committee chairman Datuk Taufik Abdul Razak said the committee had decided not to charge Rajagobal after carefully analysing the video of the post-match press conference by the 56-year-old coach. "After listening to the recording of the post-match press conference, we decided to drop the charge against Rajagopal as he did not make such a statement. "Maybe his (Rajagobal) assessment and comments of the match was misconstrued by the media. There was no mention of the FAM policy throughout his comments," said Taufik after emerging from a three-hour Disciplinary Committee meeting at Wisma FAM in Kelana Jaya, here, Wednesday. Rajagobal who does not mince his words when asked to com...
4 comments
Read more