No, no, no, no….I am not asking you to run for election. That’s over and done with a couple of weeks back. Yeah…that’s right….our mod won….yeah…your memory’s serving you well. It’s confirmed…you don’t have mad cow disease or Alzheimer’s. Lock and load!!!

But truly it’s another awakening for HT Malaysia. We have a fairly good turnout at the polls, so let’s follow that up an even better support for TB Malaysia. Some of you might ask, what’s TB? Traditionally TB has always stood for tuberculosis, yep, an infectious disease that attacks the lungs. Well, the TB I have in mind right now is commonly (or maybe not so common after all) known as Training Base.

What’s that? My thoughts exactly when I first heard that from my neighbour, Redtooth, almost some 2 years back. It’s actually a format or system that was put in place by some innovative HT veterans back in the early days of HT Malaysia (HT My). In each team we have 5 positions to look at ie. goalkeepers, defenders, midfielders, wingers and forwards. Are you with me so far? Good! These also happen to be the 5 main training positions in HT….now is that a coincidence or what! Amazing these HT folks.

Now comes the hard part. Why TB? What’s the benefit? To answer that we have to go back into the history of HT…..yeah….the prehistoric age. National team players were snapped up like barbie dolls coz their market value really shot up high in the transfer market. We had lots of rich foreign teams bidding for our national and U-20 players like there’s no tomorrow! How were local teams gonna compete with these cash rich foreign teams? No competition at all. So, what did our NT and U-20 managers did then? Well, for starters, HT My decided to have only TB players in the national team….meaning selection of players were strictly for locally based players. We shunned the foreign based players. Who could blame the NTs then. They were lacking support from the foreign teams to continue training the players. Accusations of sabotage and what not were freely exchanged between NTs and foreign team owners.

To cut the history lesson short….our national TB was formed with the intention of training and retaining national players and prospects within the confines of our border. TB coordinators were appointed together with their respective TB members. Their primary job was to identify prospects and assign them to local teams whenever possible. Of course there’s always interferences from foreign teams all the time. So, the TBs advised local team owners to list their players at odd time (more suitable for local team bidders) and ensured that the prospective bidder(s) has the necessary funds to successfully secure the player. In part the TBs also ensured that there was no competition between local teams coz intentions were declared beforehand.

So far so good, right? Wrong! This plan as in all plans before it could only succeed with the participation and support of local teams. Along the way, many members of the TB fell by the wayside. Wages began to spiral for NT players especially the diviners. Teams could not hold on to their NT players. Eventually, these players were released into the market. A more pressing issue with the TBs then was the fact that these teams had to sacrifice team success in order to continue the development of their NT trainees. Yes, it was a sad fact. Eventually the TB spirit began to diminish. For a couple of years, there was no news of any TB or any revitalisation……that is until now!

With the impending change in the match engine next season, the emphasis on multi-skilled players, some of us saw the need to revitalise the TB system in preparation for all these new and exciting changes in HT. We have now seen the re-birth of the TB system. We have a few guys coordinating and implementing the system. But what is lacking now is the support from local teams. We need you to come forward and help us to re-establish our TB and in time our NT and U-20 would be strong enough to match the very best of HT national teams. We have seen our U-20 qualifying for the World Cup. Let’s build on that and continue the fire that is right now only seems to be flickering. Stand up and step up and be counted! Adopt a Malaysian player and train him all the way to the best that he can be, to realise his full potential. Be a Malaysian!

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 22nd, 2007 at 1:29 pm and is filed under Hattrick in Malaysia, National Interests. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.