KUCHING: The recent call for another football field in Sibu to cater for the development of the game is indeed an opportune time to take a relook into our facilities.
Education and Technological Research Assistant Minister Dr Annuar Rapaee reflected the view of the long-suffering Sibu football fraternity at the lack of facilities where football is concerned.
It is indeed shocking to know that Sibu, which is the second largest town in Sarawak, has only one recognised sports stadium in Stadium Tun Zaidi and the other much used field is the Prisons field.
It is no wonder Sibu or the Central Zone, apart from Mukah, has not produced many quality football players who don the Sarawak jersey.
The furthest we can recall of a Sibu player representing Sarawak was Syukri Fadzil in the late 80s — almost 30 over years ago.
Even Mukah, which had a tradition of producing football players for the Sarawak team like Awang Daud and Awang Shahbuddin in the early 70s and 80s, did not have a proper field in the past.
Legendary coach Alan Vest used to lament the lack of good pitches in Sarawak, which hampered the development of the game especially at the grassroots level.
He pointed out that young Sarawak players used to play on poorly maintained field did not know where the ball bounced when they played against other teams in Peninsular Malaysia where they had better fields.
He had proposed many years ago when he came back during a visit that Sarawak build an all-weather astroturf pitch, and even better still, a small pitch with a roof as is now common with clubs in the English leagues.
Sarawak added an artificial pitch just a few years ago at the State Sports Complex in Petra Jaya.
To promote the game and uncover new talents at the kampung level, proper football fields should be built at the district, sub-district or even at the kampung level as there are many players playing the game at the kampung level provided they are well maintained.
Even in Kuching, there is a lack of good football pitches apart from the stadium pitches that are rented out for competitions and not for casual play. For Kuching, it used to be the Jubilee Ground, the new sports field (now the Sarawak Hockey Stadium).
For clubs, in Kuching if they want to play any games they had to queue up to book the stadiums for only in the past where the school fields and police fields were available for bookings.
Apart from football, hockey is another sport that needs urgently to have synthetic pitches in the Sibu and Miri region. Kuching has three artificial pitches in Padungan, Petra Jaya and another in Paku, near Bau.
Without these specially laid pitches, all the talents may go to waste in places like Sibu, Miri or even in Kapit where the game is played in the schools but on poor facilities in a cramped area like a basketball court or tennis court.
The growth of hockey players were also stunted in their development as they trained on cement grounds.
There were talks to build artificial pitches in Miri and Sibu where there is a great interest in the sport but their dreams have not been realised after so many years.
At least there is some improvements in the Kuching area where the Sarawak Hockey Association (SHA) had made used of the facilities in Kuching and Paku often by ferrying the players from the rural schools to play in Kuching.
These maybe some improvements over the years but no way can our hockey be on the level compared to the West where there are good facilities as well as project school and sports schools in several states in the Peninsular and Sabah.
Even there is clambering for SMK Paku to be converted to a project school but the calls had fallen on deaf ears.
Head coach C. Sivasubramaniam can lay testimony to that.
Even in combat sports, Sarawak which is planning to build a wushu centre soon, should also look into building a centre to cater for combat sports for the modifications of the building is different.
Sarawak should look to other countries in Thailand or Vietnam to build such a special centre for sports like taekwondo, karate, judo, silat and even boxing.
In Vietnam, a somewhat poor country compared to Malaysia, they have a centre for combat sports right in the middle of Hanoi which puts Sarawak to shame.
Unlike our sports facilities in Petra Jaya where the main letdown is the lack of transport, it is built right in the centre of Ho Chi Minh City where there are transport network like buses to the area and also nearby there are food stalls within walking distance.
Run by their city council, they have access to prime land to build their sports facilities just like Jubilee Ground in the past where there were swimming pool, a basketball courts or a hall which can be used by wushu at the Chung Hua primary school nearby.
There is also a hockey pitch built by the late Sports Minister Datuk Noor Tahir with his own funds for Sukma 1990 in the past.
Sarawak sports facilities had improved tremendously in the recent past with the hosting of Sukma 2016 with such world-class facilities like the Pandelela Rinong Aquatics Centre, the shooting range, the squash centre, the two stadiums and the indoor stadium, which needs refurbishment due to its limited capacity for world-class events like the Malaysia Open.
Sarawak need to build a sports school and set up several project schools for other sports like hockey, badminton, rugby or cycling.
They also need to look at neighbours Sabah who had sports hostel built at their Likas sports complex in the early 1970s. Until today, Sarawak cannot boast of having a Games village.
Without these essentials and the building-up of standard facilities in other main towns and even reach out to the villages, Sarawak will not be able to catch up with the Peninsular states or even Sabah. – Bryan Mathew
