If the ongoing indications are anything to be believed, Roelant Oltmans is a continuing saga for Asia at least. He may be off for Pakistan, but the Dutch coach is all set to land up a plum job in Malaysia.
Roelant Oltmans is likely to be inducted into the coaching of Malaysian national team.
It is gathered that present men’s chief coach Stephen van Huizen expressed his inability to continue against the backdrop of missing out the Jakarta Asian Games gold.
Significantly, Stephen did not accompany the Malaysian team that played in Darwin recently, where Malaysia took a revenge with Japan with a 4-0 rout.
Oltmans was in Kuala Lumpur on Saturday. It is expected that the Malaysian Hockey Confederation will make an announcement in this regard on Monday.
Presently, Terry Walsh is High Performance Director of Malaysian hockey. The things are turning out like an interesting role reversal.
Roelant Was HPD in India when Terry Walsh was the Chief Coach. Now in all likelihood the roles will be reversed with Roelant manning the Men’s chief coach role!
Roelant was in charge of Indian hockey teams for almost four years till last year. Thereafter, Pakistan took him on its rolls early this year.
At Jakarta, it was rumoured that the Dutch coach was not paid his monthly salary for a a few preceding months. Perhaps this and other ‘review’ of performance by Pak’s own ‘hockey legends’ seemed to have forced him to quit his job weeks ago.
Now, as the story goes, Malaysia calling.