If the ongoing Malaysia Hockey League (MHL) is used as an indicator of player quality in the country, it will definitely receive a big fat red ‘F’ on its report card.
And there are still six more scrappy matches to go.
Although the eight-team MHL completed its first second-round match on Sunday, Universiti Kuala Lumpur (UniKL) are as good as champions bar the cheering.
UniKL have 24 points from eight matches, while second-placed Tenaga are on 19. THT and Maybank are joint third on 15.
Last season was just as bad, with UniKL winning the seven-team MHL with 34 points while Tenaga were a distant second on 27 and THT third on 25.
In 2018, it was only a six-team league, with THT emerging champions on 24 points, followed by KL Hockey Club (20) and Tenaga (19).
One can see a clear pattern emerging in the last three years and it’s something Malaysian Hockey Confederation (MHC) need to take note of.
Tenaga Nasional coach Nor Saiful Zaini can only count five quality players among his 13 national players while Terengganu Hockey Team (THT) coach K. Dharmaraj lamented his bench strength.
It’s obvious that MHL was of a higher standard when six teams took part in 2018.
There is simply insufficient quality players to go around under the present eight-team competition.
Thus far, Universiti Teknologi Mara and NurInsafi, with seven points each, HockAdemy KL (six) and TNB Thunderbolts (one) are just making up the numbers.
If that doesn’t make MHC sit up and take notice, here’s another indicator of the obvious lack of quality in the league.
TNB Thunderbolts and Tenaga have almost all the national juniors, who will play in the Dhaka Junior Asia Cup on June 4-12, but are still playing “schoolboy hockey” after years of training.
Malaysia need to slug it out with the likes of India, Japan, South Korea and Pakistan to be among the top four in Dhaka to qualify for the Junior World Cup.
Chief coach Roelant Oltmans has been watching the MHL matches in the hope of dropping some underperforming seniors and injecting new legs into the squadh for the Azlan Shah Cup on April 11-18.
But the junior talent pool is so small that Oltmans would probably need to use a microscope to spot them, if there are any.