New Sabah Times
KOTA KINABALU: Several teams have shown interest to sign Sabahawks players on loan for the Malaysia Cup 2012, which Sabah will not be featuring in come September.
Alijus Hj Sipil said they are aware of interest from these teams for their players, but will only decide on the matter during the team management meeting, which has been slated for Friday (July 20).
“We have just concluded our season, and we will sit down and decide what is best for the team,” the Sabah FA Secretary General said when met yesterday.
“We will be conducting a post mortem, and we have also instructed our coaching staff to do a report on the team. Once we have the report/s, we will thoroughly go through it (during the scheduled meeting on Friday), before making any decision on the team or the players,” he added.
“We have also asked our new coach (David McCreery) to do a five-month plan for the team.
Sabah ended their 2012 campaign on Tuesday with a 0-1 defeat to Kedah in a Super League 2013 playoff in Malacca.
Mohd Syamim Aliff dealt Sabah with the killer blow by slotting home the winner in stoppage time.
The defeat to Kedah will see them featuring in the Premier League next season.
On their 2012 season campaign, Alijus said he would rather take it positively and that it is a season to learn from, before insisting that they will come back stronger next season.
National Under-22 striker sensation Md Rozaimi Abd Rahman is the only player from the Sabahawks side to have been given the green light to play for Selangor on loan for the Malaysia Cup competition.
“The deal has been done professionally with the Selangor FA, and we are delighted to see one of our players playing for one of the top sides in the country. It will be a three-month loan only,” said Alijus.
Meanwhile, Bernama reported that defending champions Negeri Sembilan plan to loan a number of players from the State squad to beef up its team in their efforts to defend the Malaysia Cup.
Head coach Mohd Azrai Khor Abdullah said the management of the Negeri Sembilan Football Association would submit a formal request this week to rope in several players who had been identified.
However, Azrai declined to reveal the names of the players prior to an agreement from Sabah because other states could have also made earlier applications to get players from the Sabah team.
Besides Negeri Sembilan, there are several more teams, who have expressed their intention to hire players from Sabah.
Among them are Kelantan, who are interested to get the services of Sabah utility man Mafry Balang.
Shahrul Azhar Ture and Sumardi Hajalan are the targets of T-Team while Sarawak are interested in the crocked Zainizam Marjan and Shahrudin Yakup.
Bobby Gonzales could also be heading his way to the neighbouring State.
For the record, only the top 12 teams in the Super League and top four teams in the Premier League make it into the Malaysia Cup.
Sabah, who had a poor season, finished 13th among the 14-team Super League.
