PETALING JAYA – The Selangor Hockey Association (SHA) aims to venture into the Hockey 5s series by producing and moulding some of its best talents from the ongoing 2024 TNB-QNET Selangor Hockey League (SHL).
After a five-year hiatus, the SHL returned to action yesterday, running until June 2, with the aim of unearthing new hockey talents in the country.
The league, to be held at the Pandamaran hockey stadium in Klang, will be contested in three divisions and is open to all age groups.
SHA president, S. Ganesh, said that the SHL committee pledges to give more importance by coming up with more grassroots initiatives for them to achieve their Hockey 5s goals.
“The last SHL tournament was held in 2019, and due to Covid-19, we had to stop. But we did focus on developing grassroots players, especially those below the ages of 12 and 14, and now we are ready to make our SHL league better than ever.
“Not only that, we will also be venturing into Hockey 5s, and we are planning to ensure that our players will be able to play for the national team in the years to come.
“We are also planning to come up with programmes for the school level, and we will be looking at it after July.
“Our biggest challenge for now is the facilities in our state. We need to overcome that as we can’t conduct our programmes if there are not enough facilities. The rent at Bukit Jalil National Stadium is not cheap, hence, we need to come up with a solution for this,” said Ganesh.
Under the guidance of coach Wallace Tan, the Malaysian team made history by finishing as silver medalists at the FIH Men’s Hockey5s World Cup last year, before succumbing to a 2-5 defeat against the Netherlands in the final last week.
At the same time, Ganesh said that the SHL committee aims to increase its number of participants in the league in the future.
“We are looking to increase the number of participants, and we hope that by next year, we will see an increase.
“Our association has been facing some funding issues, but we are not worried about the cost as we will find partners.
“We have done Tamil school grassroots programmes in the past, and we can continue to do more,” Ganesh added.
The QNET Group, formerly known as QuestNet and GoldQuest, is a Hong Kong-based multi-level marketing (MLM) company.
The group was founded in 1998 by Datuk Seri Vijay Eswaran and Joseph Bismark.
Their products include energy, weight management, nutrition, personal care, home care, and fashion accessories on an e-commerce platform.
The group was involved in the establishment of PJ City FC, which played in the Malaysia Super League between 2019 and 2022, when the football club was known as the Malaysian Indian Football Association. – April 21, 2024