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Razie the only spark in Malaysian hockey

2012-02-01 08:02:00

The national hockey team have had a wretched start to their five-match friendly Down Under and the only piece of good news has been the performance of Mohd Razie Abdul Rahim.

Malaysia, who lost 3-1 and 5-2 to Australia in the first two matches, can at least take consolation from the fact that Razie has proven his ability to deliver the goals despite not being the first -choice penalty corner specialist.

Veteran defender Mohd Amin Rahim, who has been the top scorer in the Malaysia Hockey League (MHL) twice, is the first-choice penalty corner flicker.
 

Razie, 24, scored both the goals in the second match while Izwan Firdaus notched a field goal in the opening friendly in Perth.

And team manager Stephen van Huizen is clearly impressed with Razie’s penalty corner conversion rate.

“He took three of the penalty corners and scored two against Australia, who are the world and Olympic champions,’ said Stephen in a telephone interview.

“It will be a big boost to his confidence to have scored against a team like Australia, who have one of the best defences in the world.”

Razie’s performance could not have come at a better time as Malaysia are preparing for the Olympic qualifier in Dublin in March.

The other teams in the qualifier are Chile, Ukraine, Russia, South Korea and hosts Ireland. Only the winner of the qualifier will make the cut for the London Olympics in July.

Stephen also said that they have tried out all the 21 players in the two matches thus far.

“We are using the friendlies in Perth to look for the right combinations and to finalise the team for the Olympic qualifier,” said Stephen, who was also happy with the performance of goalkeeper Roslan Jamaluddin.

Malaysia will play their third and fourth friendly matches against Australia tomorrow and Saturday while the final outing will be against the visiting Dutch team on Sunday.

Source The Star, Malaysia