1968 (part3) – hockey and introverts, extroverts and unsung heroes!

Hockey was a team game which VI excelled in, and in Selangor, RMC (Royal Military College) were our main opponents for the championship challenge trophies in most, if not all the finals of the U18 and U20 competitions played between 1966 and 1972. RMC did not compete in the U15 tournaments and the U18 competition was discontinued after 1969.

In later years, after 1970, Selangor was split into North and South zones for all inter-school sports championships. So, there were two inter-zone finals, and the two winners from there met in an end of season clash to determine the State Champions. Even then, as RMC and VI were in the same zone, the winner of our inter-zone decider was really the de facto State Champion, since the gulf bewteen these two giants and all other schools was very wide indeed! At national level though, the best schoolboy players emerged from High School in Melaka and Anderson, King Edward VII and Clifford High School in Perak.

The coach for all the hockey squads was Mr.Leonard De Vries who was also the school’s Sports Master. More than that, he also coached the Cricket teams and captained the succesful VI teams that participated in the State Navaratnam Shield competition. Lenny, a M'sian Eurasian (of Portuguese descent), was outstanding throughout his tenure in VI as teacher, disciplinarian, mentor and Sports Master. He commanded the respect of every student who came into contact with him. In 1970, he left for Canada to earn his PhD in Sports Science. Dr.Leonard De Vries was at one time attached to the Sports Science Faculty of USM Penang and is now President of the Malaysian Association of Sports Education, Sports Science and Fitness. He also consults for the National Sports Council (NSC).

As with all our coaches, whether they were at it full-time or part-time, nothing was done by halves. We had the best equipment – Karachi King Super sticks primed with olive oil – and the best maintained practice pitches which were also the venues for home fixtures. This was the era in which hockey was played universally on grass pitches for which every team had as di rigeur at least 3 players in the forward line who had good to wizard-level thrilling stickwork artistry and control, and two from the defence (usually comprising the two full backs) as short corner (whacking) and long corner conversion specialists.

We trained in all weather and conditions. Come rain or shine, we practiced without fail on Mondays and Wednesdays and Fridays. Nothing short of a typhoon would disrupt these sessions. Lenny was competent technically as well as practically. Practice sessions would always start at 4 p.m. with 45 minutes minutes of warming up and loosening up routines followed by muscle strengthening exercises such as press ups, half and full sit-ups, duck walks with the arm fully stretched out and sprints up and down the slopes surrounding the school field. For speed and stamina, there were compulsory circuits round the 400m tracks and at least one 3 ½ mile cross-country run every two weeks.

There was one golden rule. Regardless of whatever exercise it was, the hockey stick remained firmly grasped in the right palm! Even if you had the Big Call for toilet, you took the stick with you. Stick bonding was encouraged to an extent we were told that it was positively NOT KINKY to go to bed at night with hand wrapped tightly around one’s favourite hockey stick!

We would then swing into ball dribbling, passing, flicking, scooping and stickwork sessions in groups of three, e.g the right winger, right inside left and right half would form one group and pratice these moves in triangular formations up and down the field. An hour or so would then be spent on actual play. The early-season squad comprised some 2 dozen enthusiasts vying for the limited places in the final team and so full blown games took place with everyone trying to outdo the others to impress Lenny.

When the squad was finally whittled down to 13, the practice sessions became more intense and exacting with the experienced attacking forwards taking on the seasoned mid-fielders like centre half Balraj and full-backs like Yoong Fong and Peng Keong. The final half hour of practice was spent on short and long corner tactics where it was always my job to push the ball from the back-line of the ‘D’ or slam it from the long corner, to the designated stoppers and hitters waiting at the top of the ‘D’. We also practiced taking penalty ficks which rarely ever came into contention in inter-school games.

The only protection the players had against wayward and airborne balls leaving the hockey blades of the super, speed of light slammers and hitters, were the triangular shaped hard plastic guards they would tuck into the inside front of their undies to protect their family jewels! Additionally, the goalkeeper would have on a pair of leg pads and an over-sized glove for his right hand for his safety. But it really was a miracle that in all those years no-one had a really serious or fatal injury from the intentionally or unintentionally hit rising solid hockey ball. Once, it took a week for my thigh muscles to fully unlock from a ball struck into it at close quarters. On another occassion, I was side-lined for the last quarter of a game when a feather of a touch from an opponent’s stick caused intense bleeding from a gash over my eyebrow; in an instance the swelling had caused my left eye to close! But next evening, I was back on the hockey field.

The final 13 in that 1968 U15 Hockey Team included one, Raja Azlan and another, A.R.Hariharan, more popularly known as ‘Pedro’. They represented two contrasting personalities as you are ever likely to see in 1 team. Azlan was the diminitive quiet, humble and poker-faced introvert to Pedro Hari’s brash, noisy, boisterous, funny and attention seeking extrovert. They both, however, shared a common skill. They were superb hockey players. If I had to choose between the two, I would say Azlan was the more skillful. But Pedro brought a joyful approach to the game that inspired many while he had the rare ability to engender, especially in the 1970 & 1971 senior teams, great team spirit that united the players to a common cause.

Raja Azlan was of course the younger brother of the more illustrious Raja Ahmad, who was joint VI Sportsman of The Year in 1971 (colours in Football, Hockey & Tennis) and a School Prefect from Shaw House. Ahmad was quite popular among the students and was a role model, especially for Malay students. He had a quick smile for everyone, though his habit of hitching up his trousers absent-mindedly was caricaturised by one or two mimics in school. He excelled in Football and Hockey, and represented VI at tennis and cricket as well. After leaving school, he qualified as an ACA and went on to distinguish himself in his illustrious career by becoming managing partner at Ernst & Young M’sia, eventually retiring and settling in Perth, Australia. He also married his high school sweetheart who was the VI Deputy Head Girl in 1972!

Pedro Hari, together with Nazri Aziz, were the only junior players in that ’68 U15 hockey team, and it spoke volumes of their abilities since it would take exceptional talent for a junior to break into our relatively more experienced ranks. Pedro too had an elder brother in school, viz, A.R.Ramachandran (Rama) whom most of ribbed as ‘Corporal’ for many years when he was a stalwart of the Cadet Corps and in the Army. Rama, (Major Ret’d), now has of course paid his dues to King and Country, having done a stint in dangerous Bosnia. Rama had been an enthusiatic hockey player in Form 1, but competition for places in the championship teams was always intense. Nevertheless many who fell by the wayside in the weeding out process remained loyal, keen and enthusiastic supporters who came to cheer the team at every occassion we played. Such was the character building and its results that pervaded almost everything we did while in VI.

In our opening championship game of the season, Pedro outshone the rest of us. I was the leading scorer in all the friendly games and was expected to carry the torch for the whole season with centre forward and captain Chung Kian. We were 4-0 up against Maxwell Road School at half-time, and Pedro, playing as left winger had slammed in 3 of those goals, the fourth emerging from a Yoong-Fong-Peng Keong short corner murderous whack into the roof of the net! When the 2nd half commenced, I knew my reputation would take a big hit if I did not buck up! Soon enough, with the help of some solid assists from Balraj, Azlan and Chun Kian, I knocked in 2 goals and breathed a sigh of relief! The match ended with us thrashing Maxwell 9-0 with more goals from Fong-Peng Keong, Pedro and Azlan.

After the game, we had a pep-talk from Lenny who had also called over some of the senior players like Tharmasegaran, D. Krishnan, Satchinathan and Tan Lip Tiong (School Hockey Captain) from the U20 squad. And then Lenny sang Pedro Hari’s praises to the skies:

“Do you all know that in hockey the most difficult position to play is at left wing? And the only junior in the junior most squad gave us a perfect demonstration today of how to play in this most difficult of positions. He speeds down the flank outstripping Maxwell’s entire defence and then slams in 3 goals, all from the top left hand corner of the D! The keeper didn’t have a ghost of a chance....” Lenny went on about it all season.

But more than Pedro Hari’s magic, it was Azlan’s stickwork wizardy that had caugh my eyes. It had not put in much of an appearance during all those training sessions and friendly games. Yet here, when and where it mattered, Azlan showed flashes that had us gasping! Where had it come from? Did he have a personal coach or practiced elsewhere secretly? Or had he been possessed? But there it was, two oustanding performances; one from the introvert and one from the extrovert that had us all shaking our heads in wonderment!

But more was to come. The U15 Trophy finals was played in early April against St.Johns at the Gurney Road School grounds. We went into the match as favourites.

By half-time we were 1-0 ahead. Technically the goal was mine, but morally it had ‘Raja Azlan’ written all over it. Azlan had picked up a pass from me just inside St. John’s half and run through SJ’s entire defence before cracking it at goal. The SJ keeper’s stick got a thick edge to the ball as he rushed out and it was touch and go whether the ball would cross the line. That’s when I pounced on it and slammed it to the backboard of the goal with a resounding thwack. In the second half, having done all the hard work in earning it, horrors of horrors, I missed a penalty stroke! Sallehuddin quietly walked up and firmy asked me to make sure I compensated for that diabolical miss. Towards the end of the game we went 2-0 up and who else should put the icing on the cake but Raja Azlan, with yet another dazzling solo run from my through pass!

Two years later in 1970 when he was in Form 5 and VI was joint Champions with RMC, Raja Azlan produced two outstanding goal-scoring runs that had even the Form 6 players va-va ing him. One was in the semi-final game against Klang High School (played at KHS's grounds) with yet another stirring solo goal run and finish to draw level at 1-1, though we eventually won 6-1. The other was in a scintillating 1-1 drawn friendly game (played at the YMCA grounds in Brickfields) against what was virtually the entire Selangor State Team, when Azlan, dwarfed by the giants, produced the goal of the season.

Given sufficient push and encouragement, I’m sure Raja Azlan would have gone far in hockety, possibly even made it to the national team. But sadly, we lost track of him after 1970 when he left VI for further studies. I spoke to him once in 1974 about turning up for the VI Old Boys Hockey Team for the VIOBA vs VI annual fixture. But he lamented to me that ‘VI is not the same anymore. Standards have dropped. The old VI spirit is not there...” and I have not spoken to him or seen him since.

As for Pedro Hari, we are still in touch with each other, through Facebook, Rama, Balraj and our Year Group with other hockey pals and many from the classes of 1970 and 1972. I recall that in the 1971 hockey final against RMC, Pedro Hari was carried out on a stretcher half way through the game, struck by a mysterious knee twinge or spasm and never recovered to be his old speedy winger self again!

Among those I have lost touch with are Chun Kian, Sallehuddin and Che Azmi Bux. It’s still a mystery to me why Che Azmi Bux who lived in Lorong Cheong Yoke Choy near Cochrane Road School was called Che Azmi Bux. Was there a Pakistan connection? Recently though, when a group of us had a 'Buka Puasa' session at RSC Dataran, Abdul Hamid mentioned in passing that Che Azmi Bux had a successful career as an accountant, was a bit reclusive and had settled down in Jordan!

And can anyone confirm if goalkeeper Nazri is the same person as our current Law Minister? I heard he joined MCKK after his Form 5 in VI.

Our teams often achieved great results with timely glorious performances from unsung heroes like Raja Azlan and Pedro Hariharan, even as they were surrounded by other popular stars and poster boys.

And what do these events and memories matter or where do they figure, I posed earlier.

Well, in last week's reunion of the VI classes of 1970/72, I noted that most of those who attended the get together for Michael Nettleton who hails these days from Notthingham, UK and is Sr Biz Development Manager at CIBA-Geigy, were also there in 1968. The more quiet and reserved guys like the Jalils, Hamids, Morzalis, Kong Voons, Thirus, Darwis', Sadasivams, Dave Chans, Kok Keongs etc. may not always articulate it well, but they came because they belonged. They came because they wanted to. They came because we wanted them to.

And in an increasingly global world where Government policies as much as population explosions push us to anonymity and obscurity, it's good to know and be known, have friends with whom we shared wonderful experiences and be glad the other person is still alive. The individual is not forgotten or discarded with the passage of time.

Here's a 1 Malaysia most of the current crop of politicians have not a clue to!

dpp
We are all of 1 race, the Human Race