JULY 8 — It’s frustrating when you’ve poked around the back of the sofa, rifled through the drawers, turned out your pockets and still come up empty.
Transfer that scenario to the fortunes of local football and hockey and a similar annoyance lends credence to concerns that both sports are a mess that expands an already unwieldy sporting bureaucracy.
Football and hockey are like a slow train coming and had the worst week in Malaysia.
This sporting tempest, brought along with it maddening fire-demons in the form of fans — letting off flares and firecrackers — at both football and hockey matches.
The FA of Malaysia plod like the biggest donkey, local teams in the football Super League drift like the littlest hobo, the Malaysian Hockey Confederation gives us false hopes, the national hockey team makes us wonder whether the country will ever go to the World Cup finals — and fire-mad football fans bring insanity to the terraces.
Everything went wrong for two of the most followed sports in Malaysia last week. The cynical manipulation of players and administrators of both football and hockey has long taken its toll on sports lovers. Now it seems they are more than willing to dupe us.
The performance of local teams in the Super League and the national hockey team’s tepid performance at the World Hockey League is perplexing.
First, an under-23 side from Singapore orchestrated the demolition of the reputation of local teams littered with highly-paid professionals, both locals and foreigners, who have contributed zilch to lifting football standards.
The same week, the swingometer moved towards “fingers crossed” that Malaysia beat Germany and stand a chance of qualifying for the World Cup. We were massacred 6-0 in a 16-minute blitz.
After years of dampish squibs, the pair of football and hockey — big recipients of public funding — keeps showing their bland displays are not a one-off case. It is systemic. They are masters of the theatrical.
On the plinth of the temple of Delphi in Greece (still there) an inscription reads “Know Yourself”. That was 2,400 years ago, time has passed — time to be honest that Malaysian football and hockey are in meltdown.
It’s not a case of bad luck chasing good. It’s not an outcome that was fortuitous or undeserved. It stems from inane ramblings and indifference on the part of players and officials that make you and I look like pedantic fools.
For using goat manure as a plot point, I suggest both the national bodies of football and hockey step up one notch and lean on paralysed dogs as the back-up plan.
Perhaps, then they will learn to steer clear from the mantra of blah, blah, back sheets, always full of bull.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
