Sunday

What a bad Sunday morning. After a bad dream all night, I wake up at 0648hrs. Night before I’d promise Mr Bon to join his cycling mate for a ride to Negeri Sembilan. And I have to meet them in Bangi around 0710. It is 35km away from my home. It will take around 30 minutes on Sunday easy traffic drive. But I’m still looking forward to join another ride.

But I’ll make sure that I will be ready on time. Sorry Mr Bon. It was my mistake.

Typical Malaysians...do we?

PERAK FA OWES FORMER COACH RM120,000

By D.Arul Rajoo Bernama

PHUKET, Dec 10 (Bernama) -- The Perak Football Association (PFA), which owes its Super League coaches and players almost RM500,000 in salaries, is in deep trouble with the prospect of being taken to the world football governing body, Fifa, by its former coach Steve Darby.
Darby, appointed as assistant to Thailand's new coach Peter Reid last October, has yet to be paid about RM120,000 by his former employer.
The Englishman, who took Perak to the fifth spot in the Super League and the semi-finals in the Malaysia Cup competition, met FAM secretary-general Datuk Azzuddin Ahmad, who is here to watch the ongoing AFF Suzuki Cup.
"Our Status Committee already asked the PFA to honour their contract with Darby. Since the matter has yet to be solved, we will send a letter to PFA president to ask him to help solve the problem amicably," Azzuddin said.
He said that if the PFA continued to delay the payment, they could land in hot soup as Darby had the right to lodge a report with Fifa and this could result in the world governing body taking disciplinary action, including suspending both the PFA and FAM.

But the problem is not confined to Perak alone as most of the so-called professional teams in the Super League are facing similar predicament.

Azzuddin said Sarawak had unpaid salaries dating back to the 2006 season while the very few teams which had no problem paying coaches and players on time were Selangor, Johor and Terengganu.
"For states which are struggling to pay their teams, we have deducted from our annual grants but even that is not enough as the yearly grant is about RM300,000, including for the President Cup," he said.
On the contract of national coach B. Sathianathan, Azzuddin said it was up to the National Team Management Committee to deliberate on and come out with a recommendation to the FAM Council.
"It's normal to have targets for the team and coach. In Sathianathan's case, he was given the target of reaching the AFF final. Let the committee discuss this first," he said.

AAJ Comments:-

- I used to be National Rowing Coach for SEA Games.
- In 2001, fulltime National Rowing Coach being paid RM750/month.
- 2003, 2005 part- time National Rowing Coach - 'Was declared that Malaysia does not have own rowing coach, while he had spent every morning to train rowers with own cost.'
- 2007, coaches spent a year without being paid to train the SEA Games rowers.
- Who cares? Passion towards the sports has keep the Malaysian rowing coaches survives.
- Credits will only given to the other party in the association.

AAJ

My wishlist

For the last 15 years, I’m so involved with my sports called Rowing. I used to be athlete, trainer and coach. Past 10 years as the coach, I’ve met many athletes either locals or internationals. My favorite event in rowing is coxless four and coxed eight.

In many competitions internationally, we Malaysian rowers was not that good. Finding the right athletes with the right combinations was never an easy task. Rowing is an endurance sports. 2000 meters with less than 6 minutes would requires thousands kilometers of training.

But if given a chance and with the agreements of those parties involved, I would like to train these peoples in my coxless four;

1. Arexfellani Fauzi (AREX – SEA 2007)
2. Mohd Shukri (TONGA - SEA 2007)
3. Adam Hazrizul ( ADAM – SEA 2001, 2007 DB)
4. Amirudin (AMIR – SEA 2001)

I wish time and tide will wait for us. Hope to see another breed of these four fellow rows together in the future.

Olympic Dreams

Since the independent of Malaysia in 1957, many Malaysians have been to the Olympics. Unfortunately not even a single gold medal has been brought home by the Malaysians. Last summer Olympics in china, we only manage to achieve 1 silver medal from badminton men’s single by Lee Chong Wei.

But do we will achieve our first gold medal in Manchester 2012? Currently badminton associations of Malaysia have been granted with new badminton facilities.

As one of the Malaysians, I’m confident that Malaysian will achieve at least 1 gold medal in Manchester 2012. But it is does not mean that badminton will produce the gold medal.

We can also think of some other sports such as archery and shooting. Even sailing could be the one. What we need to do is just to make sure the developments and high performance training strictly followed as planned by the professionals in sports.

Many sports scientist being produces in the sports industry since year 2000. Graduates of sports science from University Malaya for instant can be utilized to achieve these goals. Used their expertise to enhance athlete’s performance, many sport experts and professors locally produce each year, but where are they? Give them some space to contribute to the next Olympic challenge. all malaysians, lets work together to be better!!