The warnings were there

THE warnings were all there after Malaysia beat Germany who became the eventual champions, but still, the chinks could not be polished in time and the Malaysian juniors were brought crashing down to earth.
  After winning gold last year at the same venue, and then going on to win the Junior Asia Cup gold medal, there was much hope that this batch of players would at least play in the thrid-fourth bracket and not languish at the end of the pool.
  Malaysia went into the tournament without two of their best juniors in brothers Fitri and Faizal Saari, who are now in Argentina for the Champions Challenge I tournament, and nobody expected them to beat Germany or India to the gold medal.
  But nobody also expected them to squander so many penalty corners in every match, almost an average of nine every match, and nobody also expected them to argue with umpires and pick up more yellow and green cards than score goals.
  Those were the two glaring chinks which saw Malaysia slide form champions to also played in the second edition.
  "We will work on the penalty corners from now until the Junior World Cup (next November in New Delhi) as even our current flicker Noor Faeez (Ibrahim) would be overage together with a few more players.
  "This batch needs much work on them before we can talk about playing in the semi-finals of the Junior World Cup," said Malaysian coach K. Dharmaraj.
   On the tournament itself, the crowd in Johor Baru were simply fantastic and never stopped cheering even when Malaysia were beaten 5-2 by New Zealand in the pool match.
  About 5,000 of them turned up for every match, and even torrential rain failed to leave the seats empty.
  And all the coaches, from India to Pakistan to Germany to Oceania only had good things to say anbout the Sultan of Johor Cup.
   The Australian coach Paul Gaudoin summed it up when he said: "This is one of the only junior tournaments in the world and we are really grateful to be here."
   No other countries in the world have a junior tournament like the Sultan of Johor Cup, which offers a platform for a sterling age-group tournament and the Malaysian Hockey Confederation and the Johor Hockey Association should be commended for running the show.