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Malaysia

BY AFTAR SINGH
KUALA LUMPUR: With the national hockey team out of action for six months, newly appointed chief coach Wallace Tan will have to go back to the drawing board to rebuild a new team for qualification to the World Cup Finals in Germany in 2006.

The national team after their failure to qualify for the Athens Olympics had only gone on one assignment – a playing tour to Australia in May. They have not had any training or competition after German's Paul Lissek was relieved of his duties as the national coach.

Wallace is a Maybank employee and he will go on the National Sports Council's (NSC) payroll for two years.

Beside the target to take the team to the World Cup Finals, Wallace also has the task to guide Malaysia to at least third place in the 2006 Asian Games in Doha. At the last Asiad in Busan in 2002, Malaysia were the bronze medallists.

The 46-year-old Wallace said that the World Cup Finals qualification target would be his toughest challenge as the national coach.

“I have about 15 months to prepare a team for the qualifying tournament in Beijing in March 2006. Many people would think that I have more than enough to build up a strong team,” he said.

“Actually, I will not have a full 15 months because players in the training squad will not be together for about three months when the domestic league (Malaysia Hockey League) is in progress. I will only have about a year to work on the team.”

Wallace added that the inactivity of the national team for six months also meant that there was a lot of catching up to do after assembling the training squad.

“We have to start all over again working on the players' fitness for the first few weeks before we can go on with the programmes on tactical play and strategies,” he said.

Wallace, who has got down to work in drawing up a comprehensive training programme, added that the national team would also face tough challenges in the tournaments next year because the other teams in the world had been actively in training and taking part in the tournaments this year.

“The top six teams in the Athens Olympics will be competing in the Champions Trophy in Lahore next month while the other six teams will be taking part in the Champions Challenge in April next year,” said Wallace.

“We are not among these top 12 and we have to start playing in the international tournaments next year to move up the rankings.”

He added that the World Cup qualifying tournament would have a strong field, including Holland, Spain, England, Pakistan, South Korea, New Zealand and Argentina.

“It's really going to be tough. However, I will try my level best to improve the standard of the national team for qualification to the World Cup,” said Wallace.

The Malacca-born Wallace will leave for Lahore next week to observe the teams in action in the Champions Trophy, which will be held from Dec 4-12.

Wallace will conduct his first national training session in the third week of next month.

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