Malaysia always does this and Pakistan always has a Mohd Imran on the national team. ANY national team.
Eleven minutes to go in the first half of the 2010 Asian Games field hockey finals and we give the opponents a corner. The Pakistan team systematically convert that into a point.
We get TWO penalty corners within 10 minutes of each other, soon enough after that, but the only assertion managed is doom.
On India’s second penalty corner, one overzealous Malaysian defender rushes out of the goal before the Pakistan forward takes his push. Defender is promptly sent out of the field by the referee, leaving Malaysia with only four players between the goalposts.
Luckily for us, Pakistan fumbles. The moral of the story is, Malaysia seems to be relying on the opponent’s weakness and not its own strength.
Meanwhile India is seething and cursing our team to blazes for defeating them in the semis. They are going, “Why oh why Malaysia, did you bother subduing us only to concede to our nemesis? Not yours. Pakistan is ours,” fists beating on Indian chests. “Heck Malaysia, do you even HAVE an archenemy?”
No we don’t. We have enemies but we don’t regularly reach an arch. I suspect we don’t really know how to.
There were facebook comments excusing the Malaysian team with, “lost steam because the players peaked too early.”
I don’t think Malaysia lost steam. You can’t lose what you don’t have. And you need to be showing increasing effort to peak.
The game itself is already heartbreaking. The commentators, why, they take international embarrassment to another level. Thank God only we Malaysians are made to cringe listening to them.
On Pakistan’s third penalty corner, the very Malaysian commentator said, penalty koner yang ke DUA…,” followed by no errata.
Fifteen minutes to go in the second half and the bloody fools talking too much make yet another stupid comment. That Malaysia is striving hard to minimize the score difference in such a worrying situation.
How about genting. Or try nazak.
He said membimbangkan. As if he was just worried. Stephen Van Huizen wants to eat his shoes and shoot his players, while Tuanku Sultan Azlan Shah looks ready to have his royal heart torn to pieces.
Our sports commentator appears mildly worried.
And keeps saying stupid things. Like, we are actually champions because we created history by getting into the finals.
We wouldn’t want to eclipse that record now, would we. Not immediately. Lets bask in the glory of being an almost for a while before we go on to actually WIN.
At halftime someone quipped that Malaysia ketinggalan but that it is perkara biasa. After all, Malaysia ketinggalan at some points during the semis but won in the end.
Okay, like this. I have a theory. You will never solve a problem if you don’t believe you have a problem. So, if you keep believing you are a great hockey nation despite being goal and gold-less, Pakistan is going to make Asian gold for the ninth time in 2014.
Against India.
