PETALING JAYA: With five minutes and 20 seconds left in the final of the SEA Games men’s indoor hockey final, Indonesia took off their goalkeeper and launched power play.
Malaysia were leading 3-0, and putting an extra man in attack at that stage of the match was a moment of desperation for Indonesia.
Yet there was method in the madness that sprung pure euphoria.
Indonesia scored three goals in three minutes, the last goal coming two seconds from the final hooter, to send the match into the roulette of a penalty shootout.
Defending champions Malaysia, who were crowned Asian champions last year, lost 2-1 in the shootout, making Indonesian indoor hockey the best in Southeast Asia.
One man knew that the players from the tiny hockey nation of Indonesia would play their hearts out, although he could never have imagined striking gold.
That man, like Indonesia’s opponents on Sunday in Phnom Penh, is from Malaysia. He is K Dharma Raj, 51.
He is being hailed as a sporting hero by many, including the Indonesian media whose removed perception of the sport, according to Dharma Raj, has changed overnight.
Dharma Raj is the technical director of Federasi Hockey Indonesia (FHI) and a former coach who had turned the Malaysian men’s and women’s senior teams, as well as the junior squads, into a feared force.
Recalling the final, he said: “It was a night of total madness and courage to be remembered forever.
“Some people thought I was crazy to take the goalkeeper out with five minutes left, but we had trained power play without the keeper for a long time.”
“We wanted one gold medal at the Games, God gave us a golden moment,” he said. “And we are equally proud of the women who took the bronze in indoor hockey.”
He said hockey in Indonesia, which often drew remarks among the locals such as “what hockey?”, will get a big boost with possible federal government funding as a result of the gold medal achievement.
Since the men’s and women’s teams were not gold medal prospects, FHI funded their participation in Phnom Penh.
Now, each member of the gold medal-winning team will receive a whopping 365 million rupiah (about RM110,000) in bonus, as well as financial rewards from the provinces they come from.“These youths, some from remote areas, are hungry for success and have made great sacrifices to play hockey for the nation,” Dharma Raj said.
His contract, which runs until 2025, looks likely to be extended, and he said he has been offered Indonesian citizenship.
If he gets the contract extension, he will play a key role in FHI’s ambition for Indonesia to qualify on merit for hockey at the 2032 Olympics that the country is bidding to host.
“The obstacles ahead are daunting, but not insurmountable,” said Dharma Raj, who represented Malaysia from 1989-1994, and played in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.
For Dharma Raj, who has been in Indonesia since 2020, the gold medal in Cambodia has been the culmination of a long journey for him and all of his players.
He worked with FHI, running trials and coaching, finding and developing kids in 10 provinces, and is still on the lookout for talent in another 24 regions.
“We don’t have a big pool of players like in Malaysia because here they begin playing at 16 or 17, but even at that late age, they develop fast,” said Dharma Raj, who has 15 indoor and outdoor coaches under him.
Exciting Indonesian journey
Dharma Raj got his first Indonesian job with the West Java provincial team after a fall-out with the Malaysian Hockey Confederation (MHC) for not extending their coaches’ contracts which ended in 2019.
He was distraught because he had taken the women’s indoor team to gold in the same year at the Philippines SEA Games.
MHC told the coaches to reapply, but Dharma Raj was not keen to do so.
After considering offers from several countries, he signed a deal with West Java in early 2020, largely because of a long-term plan for hockey in Indonesia.
Like Dharma Raj, several Malaysian coaches have moved overseas to train various national squads, as they were rattled by the lack of top coaching opportunities locally.
At the Asia Cup in Jakarta last year, four out of the eight coaches at the tournament were Malaysians, something that never happened before.
They were A Arulselvaraj (Malaysia), Dharma Raj (Indonesia) Lim Chiow Chuan (Oman) and K Gobinathan (Bangladesh).
Asked whether he would return to coaching in Malaysia, Dharma Raj said: “I was in the Malaysian setup for 11 years and as much as I like to come back, I am on an exciting adventure in Indonesia and look forward to more duels with Malaysia.” - FMT
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.