First and foremost, apologies for my poor command in English. Perhaps this topic has been discussed many times in the past and brushed aside but I think it is time to revive this topic. Given how much depth and strength are lacking within the Malaysian Women's Singles and Doubles, is it time for BAM management to consider alternative solution to improve the capability of this department ? This is where MM2H programme comes in. I am thinking if BAM or even the government should consider revising the programme to lure or attract foreign players to invest/contribute in Malaysia for a specific set of sport. Malaysia has done this in the past and even now. Look at the FAM, they have naturalised three foreign players whom I believe have zero ties to Malaysia but they are contributing in some way to the national team build up. Having that said, it does receive a lot of opposition from many people hence it's a controversial topic. Why did I bring up this topic for debate ? Because I truly believe any solution or approach is not working effectively in the women's singles and doubles. It's not a matter of coaching, staff support or even how many times you send the players for international tune up matches. The outcome is still the same. The real reason behind this is there is a limited pool of badminton talent among Malaysian women. Sorry if this is getting even more controversial. Malaysia has 32 million population and why countries like South Korea, England or even Denmark could find players who could compete in the top 8/10. After seeing how Singapore has done it for women's table tennis and it is yielding results, why can't Malaysia do the same thing for this sport specifically ? I hope this topic gets discussed and even further debated among BAM management.
In Singapore, I do not need to look at table tennis actually. Their badminton foreign talent the likes of Gu Juan, Fu Mingtian etc are adding a lot of depth into the team events. The biggest problem is their presence are overwhelming hence no local Singaporean female players could shine. That's why I hope the programme could cap the number of foreign talents so that local Malaysian players are not neglected and they too have a good chance to improving.
There’s talent in Malaysia if you put the resources into it. Traditionally, the ladies team had a lower priority in training. I remember a ex-national MAS ladies player telling me 25 years ago that the national ladies had no centralised training yet the men’s team did. You get a lack of role models for the new generation. Obviously it’s not a population problem but if your system is geared to men’s tournaments , it puts off girls playing. You want to increase your pool of girls playing the game at a younger age. When I go to Malaysia, I see guys outnumber the girls by a huge amount on courts. Malaysia has a lot of single gender schools so get the girls playing, spot the talent for girls and give them equal attention. Give encouragement to their parents to keep them coming down to the courts.
India can produce good badminton women players be it singles or doubles. Their training system, facilities and coaching quality may be questionable but no way it's superior to Malaysia's Spain badminton system is non-existent but they can seriously produce a world beater named Carolina Marin. Indonesia has been plagued by almost the same issues of their women players underperforming in regular tournaments with the exception of Polii. Somehow they are marginally better. I am not trying to say MM2H route will be an instant silver bullet to the problem but it may be a good stepping stone for better things to come? If you take a look at Great Britain, their recent Olympics performance shows clearly that they have a good system and the right set of players. What is missing from their recipe of success is great talent and how far their players want to progress. The players over there CAN PLAY good badminton but lack the winning edge. Their women players are arguable better than the Malaysian women players. After what we witness from Emma Raducanu's fairy tale, I will not be surprised to see a similar thing mirrored in Badminton for UK.
MM2H is for retirees so I don’t know how they can be turned into world class players. Certainly you won’t get people paying to play for Malaysia. I suggest you think outside the box for coaching. Think of something to give to the female players in Malaysia and raise the status. Then you might have to do something special for them to break the cycle of lot getting to the top. Lastly, if you want more eligible female players, look to those Malaysians who have emigrated overseas and their children. A sizeable number play badminton and I know some from U.K. do go back to Malaysia to train. However, they don’t get Malaysian passport. Why can’t they get a passport and then represent Malaysia? One of Malaysia greatest exports is people moving away - you can bring them back the next generation given the right incentives. Remember Jospeh schooling use to swim for Perak. Can he get Malaysian citizenship? No, Because if your mother is Malaysian, you cannot get the citizenship. It’s only recently that the court ruled a child of a malaysian mother can apply for citizenship. If Malaysian were to recognise dual nationality, I think then incentives would be much better than relying on MMH2 retirees. As for Carolina Marin, she succeeds despite the system. It was her coach that was important.
I would like to see Malaysia does these: 1) To have more qualified coaches in schools in smaller towns/cities. In most secondary schools, badminton are "coached" by just regular PE teachers. In my time , I could see many talented athletes were wasted because they did not have quality coaching. Why not send these PE teachers to get certified. Perhaps, just like teaching special subject, by having specialized sports credentials, they could get additional incentive pay. These do not need to be former great players, but just need to have knowledge and know how to impart the knowledge. 2) Promote after school badminton program with these qualified coaches. If there are good qualified coaches that run these after school program, there would be more reasons for parents to send their athletic kids. I believe gone are the days where parents just want their kids to be book worms! My 2 cents! By the way, I don't believe in importing players, importing good coaches would be great!
I have seen different coaches change hands in the women's department and the results are still the same. Let me be clear on my expectation: 1) Two Women Singles in the top 16 and hopefully one of them can win occasional titles. 2) Two Women doubles in the top 16 that will be able to reach QF and semifinals consistently. All i am seeing right now is them losing in early rounds when playing in international tournaments and cannot contribute a single point in team events. "Importing players" clearly fail in Australia and maybe New Zealand because I think their players are just not talented enough and coaching system is not good at all. However Australia/New Zealand hire somebody like Park Joo Bong for a year to beef up their footwork and fitness regime, they will be turned from leisure level to competitors. Malaysian women shuttlers are unfortunately despite many coaches have come and go, the results are not night and day. Maybe they could bring one or two in and then pair that foreigner with any of the local player to tune up their game? Best example - Tony Gunawan and Howard Bach. They did win a lot of titles outside of Pan-America for about two-three years before they declined out of sight.
Actually, I do think the present system in UK is very good with the different grades of county tournaments for juniors. The bronze and silver tournaments could do with longer games though. One game to 15 points for a match is a bit short if you are travelling perhaps a hundred miles, even if you do get a few games. Unfortunately, the distances to badminton training can be pretty long and there are a lot of other sports available. That reduces the potential number of players. Juniors can get ranking points and work towards going higher if interested and that ranking works for the whole of England from junior to seniors.
Precisely what I wanted to say. As much as UK badminton is no where near Malaysian standard, they somehow have a very good system and organised club structure like Denmark. I saw players competing in BUCS and some club tournaments, they can actually play good badminton and I mean for all genders. I always wonder why they do not win titles overseas despite having such a system in place. I feel the UK players do not have the grit, right attitude or even talent to be at the top. They just "know how to play but cannot win big things". A bit similar to Japan before their major transformation.
Park Joo Bong was in the past head coach of BAM. Went to Japan, had a few more years and Japan did pretty well. Malaysia should have kept him.
There is a shortage of talent in the women's department. Not many girls or their parents would want their daughters to go through grueling training without a chance to make it big in sports. Often its the parents themselves who recognised exceptional talents or interest in their girls that they send them for proper private coaching. If their girls have no interest parents would not make such investments as the girls would not be motivated to go for coaching lessons in the first place. Then they would have to go to all the junior age competitions to be spotted by state BA or National BA scouts. After that its off to the national residential school in KL to train. Parents are wary to send their girls away to boarding school. Goh Jin Wei is a case in point. As a young girls she has shown exceptional talent and the BAM offered her a place in the Badminton School. At the same time Singapore BA was offering her too ( which the Loh guy took) . Her mother was thinking about the offer but in the end decided to go with BAM (which was a safe choice on hindsight as she had her health problems later SG BA wont give her the support like BAM did. Nevertheless our womens department have improved since the 70s. We were never that strong in the womens game with Denmark Japan and England as the traditional powers before the 80s. As for PJB coaching in Malaysia. Foreign coaches are not well like to helm the coaching set up in Malaysia. There is a sense of Xenophobia in this. It took government intervention in the 80s to get Chinese coaches to come train our players and even then its often the younger pliant ones who have good working relationship with BAM management. Morten Frost and PJB have left Malaysia after short two year stints. PJB wont be able to work magic on our girls. Indonesians coaches seems to have better success as the culture and playing sytle are similar. But they can only play the subordinate role never the head coach or coaching director.
Which is why I propose and debate the MM2H route to import foreign talent. Due to conservative, narrow mindedness and lack of financial appeal of badminton, the real talented ones who could be destined for sports greatness are completely hushed and covered by the parents. Systems do play a part too but parents are the ones mainly responsible. As a result, we see a lot of females players in Malaysia that originate from middle class and above. Most of them do not really have the right attitude, spoilt and willingness to succeed. How can the likes of Carolina Marin, Kristy Gilmour, Sania Nehwal, Ratchanok Intanon Michelle Li succeed ? Their coaching system is not up to par, lack of quality sparring partners and almost lack of funding. Malaysia has all these so no excuses. The only thing lacking is a Malaysian woman that could think like those players ? Do i have the determination and hunger to succeed and be the best. The sad reality from my point of view is a lot of them have snowflake mentality.
I think apart from China, no other countries has a steady stream of players who can be world-beaters. For Taiwan, after Tai Tzu Ying, there's no one else in sight now. For India's huge population, it's the same case after Sindhu. Marin is also a one-off for Spain. Their 2nd ranked WS player is way lower ranked. Even with Japan's so-called good development program, there's no one in clear sight after Yamaguchi and Okuhara, same goes for Momota. In terms of importing talent, SG's situation is different from Msia. They simply don't have enough pool of girls taking up badminton, therefore maybe important talents is a way for them to encourage more girl players into the game. In Msia, in the junior age group tournaments, we normally see bigger pool of young girls between 8-11 years old. However, once they enters 13 years old, you'll see the pool getting smaller and the remaining ones are those still hard in training and aspires to be either in the state team or further. Parental support is very important in this journey, and we usually see the good ones' parents are also keen badminton enthusiast and they would be the ones to understand better how to support their kids' development and training over the years. The rest would just give up along the way when no immediate result is seen, as in winning tournaments. The amount of time and financial investment on trainings and gears over the years are just immeasurable. In the case of the Malaysian WS team, after Wong Mew Choo who's definitely shown better results in recent times, Goh Jin Wei is supposed to be the bright spark, but sadly she has resigned. There is a group of upcoming junior WS players under Misbun Sidek now in BAM. They will be competing in a few upcoming junior and senior tournaments in Europe. These will be good exposure and yardstick to see their potential. Let's see how far they can go. Cheers!
Malaysia is not lacking of skills, I think what we are lacking is athletic talents in smaller cities that are not properly to good coaching. Hence you see lots of our juniors that are super skillful but not athletic. This is because these are from areas that have good coaching and better amenities which allow even more privilege kids to get great coaching and become skillful. The would dominate junior national scene but once they are promoted to seniors, lacking of natural athleticism will immediately be exposed. Just contrast between out junior players that are peers to Chen Yu Fei for example. You need certain height and built to be successful. LZJ is a good example of super athleticism combines with good skills.
For Marin's case, I would rather give more credit to Marin herself instead of giving it to coach alone. Because apart from Marin , no other players under her coach shined. This proves her capabilities and work ethic.
Both had to work together. the coach has to have the right player, the player has to have the right coach. He didn’t do it all himself. He admits this in an interview.
Every country got talents. Its the administrators that messed it up. In Malaysia, if you don't fix the match fixing issue, forget it. Also, no proper 'methodology'. Ada ka??? Even in Sg, this loh guy got talent, the people around him are clowns. How to be good? I even wrote the the minister, he yaya papaya brush it off trying to do for all, he said. He can't even handle 1 sport association and yet he said, he want to do it for all. What a cartoon fella. Clowns are clowns. They just take money and run. Sad to say.
