KOTA KINABALU: The M-League 2009 is less than one week old, but the FA of Malaysia has started to show their weaknesses or rather unprofessionalism.
In this latest case, they have decided to postpone Sabah’s President’s Cup home tie against Shahzan Muda of Pahang, which was scheduled for Thursday.
To make matters worse, it was learnt that the Sabah FA was only told about the postponement late Monday night – what a nice time to let its affiliate members know from the hardworking FAM officials!
The reason for the postponement was because Shahzan Muda’s failure to get air tickets for the clash at the Likas Stadium.
The Sabah FA Executive Secretary Harry Baking confirmed that they were told by the FAM about the postponement on Monday night.
“FAM informed me that the match originally scheduled for Thursday has been postponed. I was made to understand that the decision was made after the opponents failed to get air tickets for the match here,” said Harry yesterday.
Meanwhile, a Sabah team official was disappointed at the eleventh hour postponement.
He said it was not supposed to happen as all the participating teams in the President’s Cup league have been given the fixtures much earlier for preparations, including travelling for away matches and booking of air tickets.
The date for the postponed match has yet to be fixed but the rest of the fixtures will continue as it is.
That means that the Junior Rhinos’ first match will be against Johor FC at the JCorp Pasir Gudang Stadium on Jan 15.
The other teams in Group B with Sabah are Selangor PKNS, Proton Selangor, Kuala Lumpur, Felda United KL, Johor FC, Perak UPB MyTeam, Kedah, Kelantan, Terengganu, MBJB Johor, Melaka and Pulau Pinang SDM Kepala Batas.
The Junior Rhinos will have last season’s Under-19 coach Rozlee Idris guiding them and assisted by Janus Tioon while Alijus Sipil is the team manager.
