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News for 15 December 2019

All the news for Sunday 15 December 2019


Men's Junior AHF Cup 2019 - Finals
Muscat (OMA)

14 Dec 2019     IRI v SRI (7/8th)     1 - 1 (3 - 1 SO)
14 Dec 2019      THA v SGP (5/6th)     0 - 1
14 Dec 2019     TPE v UZB (3/4th)     5 - 3
14 Dec 2019      CHN v OMA (Final)     0 - 0 (4 - 2 SO)

Final standings

  1. China
  2. Oman
  3. Chinese Taipei
  4. Uzbekistan
  5. Singapore
  6. Thailand
  7. Iran
  8. Sri Lanka
  9. Hong Kong China

FIH Match Centre



MHC wield the axe

By Jugjet Singh


Roelant Oltmans

THE Malaysian Hockey Confederation (MHC) have “sacked” all their coaches, except for Roelant Oltmans, amidst suggestions that dubious elements may have been at work in the national team’s disastrous London Olympic Qualifiers last month.

Among the coaches affected were K. Dharmaraj (national women’s team), Nor Saiful Zaini (National Juniors) and national assistant coach Stephen van Huizen as well as all others under contract with the MHC and National Sports Council (NSC).

The MHC, at their second executive committee meeting yesterday, also invited Police and the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) to be a part of the review committee to discuss the team’s London failure.

Police are affiliates of the MHC, whose newly set-up disciplinary committee is headed by MACC deputy chief commissioner (operation) Datuk Seri Azam Baki.

Asked if the MHC suspected dubious elements to be at work in the national men’s team’s 9-3 aggregate loss to Britain in London, Subahan said: “Maybe, who knows?”

“Actually, it’s routine to call the Police and MACC to be in our national team review committee... it’s been done before. I don’t think there are any dubious elements (involved) in our London disaster, but it’s better to have them in our review committee... just in case,” said Subahan.

Malaysia lost the first leg 4-1 on Nov 2 and the second leg 5-2 the next day at the Lee Valley Stadium in London.

“We provided the team with everything they needed, and we even went over and beyond our responsibilities to meet their needs.

“We provided more than what other countries would normally give. So, it’s only right that we get to the bottom of the reason as to why they still failed. It will be up to the review committee to find out, so we know better for future tournaments,” said Subahan.

As for the coaches, he said they would be given two months’ leave when their contracts expire on Dec 31.

This, Subahan said, would give MHC time to evaluate the coaches’ performances.

“MHC will not renew the contracts of all the coaches, except for Oltmans, who has a 2+2 contract.

“The rest will be given two months’ leave and they can coach the clubs in the Malaysia Hockey League if they want.

“We will evaluate their performances and call them back for fresh interviews or we may hire others if there are better ones out there.”

Meanwhile, Negri Sembilan defeated Perak 2-1 to win the girls’ National Under-14 title at the National Stadium in Bukit Jalil yesterday.

Husna Najihah Jasman was the toast for Negri with a brace in the 52nd and 59th minutes, while Nurul Syafiqah Nurhisam netted for Perak in the 22nd minute.

Johor defeated Perak 3-1 in the boys’ final.

New Straits Times



Dar Hockey Academy Stole the Show at the National Junior Hockey Championship

By Ijaz Chaudhry

Pakistan's 36th national junior hockey championship was recently held in Lahore. Once again, a large number of boys from the Dar Hockey Academy, Pakistan's premier hockey reservoir,figured  for various teams.

No less than 30 Dar Academy players appeared for eight teams.

These included all the four semifinalists, WAPDA, Customs, SSGC and Punjab 'A' as well as two quarter finalists, Mari Petroleum Company Limited and Army 'A'.

Winners WAPDA included four while the surprise runners up Customs had as many as 11 colts from the academy. Seven appeared for the two army teams in the fray.

Ali Aziz scored the only goal of the semifinal which WAPDA won 1-0 against SSGC while another academy boy Hammad Anjum was among the WAPDA's scorers in the final against Customs.

For good measure, both the finalists were coached by the trainers of the Dar academy.
WAPDA: Waqas Butt
Customs: 1994 World Cup winner Danish Kaleem, the head coach of the Dar HA.

Ijaz Chaudhry writes on hockey & other sports. For more about him and his work, visit: www.sportscorrespondent.info  

Fieldhockey.com



Managing Sports-Related Concussion

Ethical and Legal Matters

By Dr Shermella Roopchand-Martin, head of UWI Mona campus' Academy of Sport

Man­age­ment of ath­letes with sports-re­lat­ed con­cus­sion pos­es sev­er­al eth­i­cal and le­gal chal­lenges, be­gin­ning with who makes the de­ci­sion re­gard­ing re­moval from the field or re­turn to play. The Con­cus­sion in Sport Group en­cour­ages a mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary, col­lab­o­ra­tive ap­proach. How­ev­er, it places the fi­nal de­ci­sion in the hands of the team clin­i­cian or an ap­pro­pri­ate­ly li­censed health­care pro­fes­sion­al. This pos­es a chal­lenge, since a team physi­cian is em­ployed by the sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion to look af­ter the team and not just in­di­vid­ual ath­letes. At a sport­ing event, the team doc­tor is faced with tremen­dous pres­sure from mul­ti­ple sources. The de­ci­sion to re­move a play­er can have a neg­a­tive im­pact on team psy­che and ad­verse­ly af­fect tour­na­ment out­come, re­sult­ing in harm for the en­tire team. This may re­sult in the team doc­tor fac­ing threats from the ath­letes, the or­gan­i­sa­tions, fam­i­ly mem­bers and the pub­lic. It is not an un­com­mon prac­tice there­fore to see in­jured play­ers re­turn to the field be­cause the risk/ben­e­fit analy­sis falls in favour of ‘re­turn to play and deal with the in­jury lat­er’.

With con­cus­sion in­juries, how­ev­er, the risks may be death and se­vere/per­ma­nent dis­abil­i­ty. For sports like Amer­i­can foot­ball and box­ing, these con­cerns have re­sult­ed in de­ci­sions to have in­de­pen­dent, match day doc­tors make the de­ci­sion re­gard­ing con­cus­sion. The down­side here is that a bad call can be made due to the physi­cian’s lack of fa­mil­iar­i­ty with the play­er’s base­line nor­mal be­hav­iour.

By plac­ing the de­ci­sion in the hands of the physi­cian, we have moved in­to the realm of dis­re­gard for au­ton­o­my. One may feel it is a back­ward step to the days of pa­ter­nal­is­tic med­i­cine where the doc­tors made de­ci­sions for pa­tients. Re­spect for an adult of sound mind to de­cide what hap­pens to them or what is done to them is a fun­da­men­tal hu­man right. In the case of sports, how­ev­er, one must con­sid­er whether an ath­lete in com­pe­ti­tion can make au­tonomous de­ci­sions. An au­tonomous de­ci­sion re­quires the ath­lete to be of sound mind and free from ex­ter­nal pres­sures. When thou­sands of fans are scream­ing for the ath­lete to re­turn to the field and they are fac­ing the risk of los­ing en­dorse­ments and are un­der the pres­sure of fail­ing their team­mates, can they make an au­tonomous de­ci­sion? Add to that the al­tered men­tal state of a con­cussed in­di­vid­ual.

In stan­dard med­ical care, when some­one is men­tal­ly com­pro­mised, de­ci­sions are made by a proxy. The proxy is some­one who knows the per­son well enough that the like­li­hood of them mak­ing the same de­ci­sion the per­son would make for them­selves is high. Do our ath­letes name a proxy be­fore the tour­na­ment sea­son? Is this some­thing we may want to con­sid­er in­stead of leav­ing de­ci­sions to the team physi­cian?

Au­tonomous de­ci­sion mak­ing re­quires hav­ing ad­e­quate knowl­edge to weigh the risks and ben­e­fits of a de­ci­sion. Sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions and their as­so­ci­at­ed health care team have an eth­i­cal oblig­a­tion to en­sure that ath­letes and coach­es are suf­fi­cient­ly ed­u­cat­ed about con­cus­sions and the as­so­ci­at­ed risks be­fore the start of a tour­na­ment. On­ly then can au­tonomous de­ci­sions be made.

Dis­trib­u­tive jus­tice must al­so be tak­en in­to con­sid­er­a­tion. Con­cussed ath­letes may re­quire spe­cialised care which can be un­af­ford­able and in­ac­ces­si­ble. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly so for per­sons from low­er so­cio-eco­nom­ic brack­ets and rur­al com­mu­ni­ties. At a gov­ern­men­tal lev­el, there must be plans for ed­u­ca­tion­al cam­paigns that can reach these in­di­vid­u­als. Spe­cial, na­tion­al health in­sur­ance cov­er­age for ath­letes should be dis­cussed at this lev­el since many ath­letes may orig­i­nate from homes where health in­sur­ance is not af­ford­able. Long waits for ac­cess to ‘free health­care’ through the pub­lic sec­tor does not bode well for ath­lete’s out­comes and some of the spe­cialised ser­vices may not be avail­able in the pub­lic sec­tor.

Pri­va­cy and con­fi­den­tial­i­ty laws pose a sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenge in con­cus­sion man­age­ment. Ath­lete safe­ty re­quires coach­es and man­agers to be in­formed about the ex­tent of in­jury, progress, pre­cau­tions and out­comes, yet the play­er can de­mand that the in­for­ma­tion not be shared. This leaves a risk for play­ers who are not ful­ly cleared for re­turn­ing to play. With­out ad­e­quate in­for­ma­tion be­ing shared with coach­es and man­agers, team de­ci­sions may al­so be ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed re­sult­ing in com­pro­mised team per­for­mance. One so­lu­tion is for ath­letes to com­plete waivers, be­fore the start of the sea­son, giv­ing per­mis­sion to the team doc­tor to dis­cuss med­ical in­for­ma­tion with their coach­es and man­agers. Ver­bal con­sent is in­ad­e­quate. With­out signed, legal­ly bind­ing doc­u­ments, sports med­i­cine prac­ti­tion­ers and sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions leave them­selves vul­ner­a­ble to law­suits.

Sport­ing bod­ies, as well as schools, must be proac­tive and de­vel­op in­sti­tu­tion­al con­cus­sion poli­cies that will pro­tect both the ath­lete and the or­gan­i­sa­tion. In do­ing so, the dif­fer­en­tial roles of a team doc­tor ver­sus a per­son­al doc­tor must be con­sid­ered and de­ci­sions made re­gard­ing the use of match­day doc­tors in our re­gion. All stake­hold­ers must be in­volved in the shap­ing of poli­cies and guid­ance doc­u­ments.

The Trinidad Guardian

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