The organizers want lot of people to witness their mela. But that is not simply happening here. Crowd response on first two days were rather poor. Normally, KL’s Bukit Jalil attracts good crowd. I too wonder why lack of interest now. It is too early to say anything, crowd might pick up later, but perhaps people thought their team stands no chance in the competition. Hosting a tournament in which the host’s winning chances are practically less, will do more harm than good. I don’t think Malaysia ever won any tournament it hosted.
But don’t blame the organizers. Their efforts are good. At least two school teams support each team, sporting supporting country’s jerseys. On Day Two on the second pitch, when Paul Lissek passed over the crowd, one of the school group started shouting Paul Lissek ….Paul Lissek, and it went on for about 20 minutes. Children have almost forgotten they are here to support British or German teams. Later on, one of my friends told Paul visits many schools to spot talent, supervise coaching schemes, and is not an unknown name in KL at least.
There is one guy in the big contingent of Dutch’s supporting team. His name is John, handling software applications. He is also FIH certified coach. He nowadays sports a beard. He volunteers to explain the reasons for that. “I shaved off before the Germany World Cup last year, and my team did badly. So I don’t want to shave now, may be up to next Olympics”. Even as he was telling this, Roelent Oltmans, who relish such trivia, intervened to say, “He won’t shave for another 40 years, I suppose”.
There was press conference before the first match on day One. Local chiefs of FIH sponsors like BDO, Samsung were all there, and also a vice president of Malaysian Hockey Confederation. Team’s jersey, volunteer jersey, school jerseys were released. The main sponsors Samsung also gave away five sets of Samsung mobile sets. The comperer of the programme got the brand name wrong, and said Nokia, much to the discomfiture of the VIPs on the dais. One later commented, ‘Perhaps that is the one that guy has’. Once all these formalities were over, the same comperer called off the press conference, but the vice-president of MHC reminded him of Q&A session. Then all again sat for the questions, but got none from the press. Then after much prodding, one fellow came forward, and asked how much is the sponsorship amount. Those on the dais just bullied. With that Q&A session was over. The PCs, not the penalty corners but Press Conferences, are certainly becoming mere formalities.