Friday, December 30, 2016

IT'S TOUGH NEW YEAR RESOLUTION, AS USUAL









IT’S that time once again as the New Year dawns upon us on Sunday to make resolutions.
More often than not resolutions are made with enthusiasm and many unrealistic ones are made in the process.
However, so often when the next New Year comes around, a year from now, we are no better off than we were last year.
And it’s no surprise when many fail to not being able to uphold their resolutions no matter how hard they tried.
However, we still believe it was always worth trying, but among the sports fraternity, I wonder if they actually have resolutions that get fullfilled. 
Yet, a majority of the National Sports Associations (NSAs) start out hoping for the best.
However, in fairness to a handful of associations, who run their bodies professionally, they have programmes with emphasis on grassroots development. They are the ones who time and again come out tops and continue to progress.
And it is associations governing badminton, squash, cycling, gymnastics, waterski and wakeboard, and tenpin bowling which continue to give Malaysian sports a good name.
Others which do well and in line to raise the bar include basketball, cricket, golf, hockey, netball, rugby, snooker and billiards, swimming and wushu.
But much more can be done by all and those who have not been doing much, they had better make it their resolution to shape up or ship out!
The biggest worry associations always face is the lack of finance, yes, it is agreed times are bad and sponsorship, big or small, is hard to come by, and many of sports supporters are already tied down with chosen associations.
It is time to think out of the box and get rid of the dole mentality.
NSAs must stop running to the National Sports Council (NSC) with the begging bowl and instead learn to manage their grassroots programmes by themselves.
Grassroot programmes must be managed by NSAs, full stop.
Otherwise, they might as well hand over their associations to NSC.
For next year, NSC have a budget of RM1.2 billion, of which RM450 million will go towards preparing athletes for the Sea Games and Asean Para Games which Malaysia will host from August to September.
Another RM75 million has also been allocated for the Podium Programme, which is geared to the 2020 Olympic gold medal target.
The programme also targets a top-10 medal finish at the 2018 Asian Games in Indonesia and Commonwealth Games in Australia the same year.
Under the Kita Juara programme, even sports associations who have in the past not been receiving much assistance from NSC as they are considered ‘minor’ sports, will get aid to prepare their athletes for the Games.
This is to ensure Malaysia as hosts emerge champions in the biennial Games.
A target of 100 gold medals or more is the target to achieve the overall championship title.
A lot of money is being spent towards the Games besides just for training — infra-structure, beautification, transportation, accommodation, opening and closing ceremonies and many other areas.
But it is hoped money spent through this Games leaves behind a legacy and a foundation for many sports to use this platform to higher levels in the coming years.
However, if NSAs are just going to use the funds for the Games to ride on the bandwagon without and clear objectives, it is going to be money down the drain.
Without doubt the resolution for NSAs for this year must be to win as many gold medals as their athletes can to aid Malaysia emerge champions last achieved when the country hosted the 2001 Games winning 111 gold, 98 silver and 86 bronze medals.
Happy New Year everyone, but the sports fraternity should hold their celebrations till Aug 31 — the last day of the SEA Games and Merdeka Day.

TONY is a sports journalist with close to four decades of experience and is passionate about local sports.
He can be reached at tmariadass@gmail.com





Friday, December 23, 2016

MERRY SEASON, THOUGH NOT FOR FOOTBALL



COMMENTARY   

Level Field 

    

THE jolly season is here, but certainly not for football.
Football is at its lowest ebb, at international and domestic levels.
But let’s not talk about the national team, especially after their dismal performance at the AFF Cup earlier this month.
Let’s look instead at our domestic league, which should be the foundation of our national team.
It’s in a mess despite the game having been played competitively since 1921, with a transition to semi-professionalism in 1989 before going fully professional in 1994.
Even the fact the league is managed privately by Football Malaysia Limited Liability Partnership (FMLPP) has not solved anything.
In fact, it has plunged it into more controversies and complications.
The appointment of MP & Silva, a leading international sports agency, by the FA of Malaysia (FAM) as its global advisor on media and commercial rights, with the goal of extending its broadcast reach and maximising the commercial potential of its properties for 15 years, was seen as a great move.
But in less than a year from its start, the marriage between FAM and MP & Silva is on the rocks and headed for divorce!
To make matters worse, Kelantan, Perlis and Selangor are contemplating withdrawing from the league if they cannot secure funds to manage their teams.
Do these teams realise a pullout will bring a total ban and a fine by FAM?
Then, we have the wrangle between FA of Selangor and PKNS over the latter’s participation in the Super League owing to sanction issues, while Kuala Lumpur FA refuses to allow City Hall SC to compete in the FAM Cup.
PKNS complicated matters by registering themselves as affiliates with the Malaysian Malay Football Association (MMFA) while still being registered with FAS and participating in their league.
The double registration complicates matters.
The question whether PKNS are an associate member or full member of MMFA is fraught because the latter’s constitution requires members to have the word ‘Malay’ in their club’s name.
How any football organisation which exists to promote and develop football can deny participation to an eligible team, I cannot understand.
However, when it is purely a case of financial woes, as are the cases in Kelantan and Perlis, the question must be asked: How can professional teams continue to be dependent on state government aid?
But this is what happens when state FAs appoint government officials as their heads, as these officials are expected to use their influence to raise money.
Why can’t Malaysian clubs, as in most parts of the world, be run professionally, like business entities?
A majority of teams in Malaysia do not even have their own stadiums, training grounds, clubhouses and buses to travel to matches, which are basic requirements for professional teams.
Even when teams obtain sponsors, they get into problems because some sponsors have their own agenda.
Without doubt, Malaysia football is in crisis.
Time and again, there were changes to the M-League format, the composition of teams and even the rules.
Yes, changes to make the league better are acceptable. But when each time a change is made and has the effect of plunging the league deeper into confusion and controversy, we are certainly heading the wrong way.
The time has come to be strict with teams wanting to compete in the M-League.
The Super League must be for teams which meet the criteria of a professional team. The Premier League must be for amateurs.
It may be the season to be jolly and generous, but what local governors of football need, is to be cruel to be kind.
Malaysian football can no longer wait for Santa Claus to come bearing them gifts.
Merry Christmas everyone!

TONY is a sports
journalist with close to
four decades of experience
and is passionate about
local sports.
He can be reached at
tmariadass@gmail.com



Saturday, December 17, 2016

ROLLING STONE THAT GATHERED MOSS


By Tony Mariadass

Pictures by: Azneal Ishak

How the Malay Mail changed Peter’s life


The Malay Mail played a major part in shaping veteran journalist and author, Peter Moss.
Moss who turned 81 on June 27, was the first roving reporter of Malay Mail when he joined in September 1957.
Although he was with the newspaper for only eight years and had spent more than 40 years in Hong Kong, he now lives shuttling between Ijok in Batang Berjuntai and at the Laguna Bay in Luzon City.
We all have those metamorphic moments that spin our lives around and send us in completely new directions. I've had several, but perhaps the most transformative was a newspaper cutting from the 'Malay Mail' newspaper in distant Kuala Lumpur,” said Moss when met at his home in Ijok.
“A thoughtful aunt had dispatched this to me in England when I was desperately seeking new horizons.  
“That cutting sent me on an overland journey from London to India by bus, and then on by sea from Calcutta to Penang. It also led me to eight of the happiest years of my life as a roving correspondent in what was then Malaya but has subsequently become Malaysia.”
Moss who met his old friend, Ong Ho Hin at Ijok said: “Ong was recruited to the 'Malay Mail' library in August 1957, was just seventeen years old. When I arrived two months later, to join the newspaper's editorial team, I was 22.”
It was Moss’ story of his journey to Malaya from England that landed Moss his job with Malay Mail.
He related: “I was born in Allahabad India, where my father (William Frank Moss) was serving the British army before India’s independence in 1947. (Mother was Holly Watson). Despite my British inheritance, my British passport and my English education, I had not developed a wholly British identity and outlook. Britain had failed to imprint herself on my psyche.
“But while I could not consider myself a product of my father’s land, I did see myself as a by-product of her empire. I had been weaned on her imperial accomplishments and regretted the speed with which that history was being relegated to the trash can. I was - as many in my family saw me trapped in a time warp, floundering in the wake of a sunken liner, desperately reaching for a life raft.”
Moss after completing his studies in England, was from 1950-1953 an apprentice reporter at Bexhill-on-Sea Observer, before from 1953-1955 joined the National Service with the Royal Army Pay Corps.
From 1955-1957 he was a district reporter at East Sussex Express & County Herald.
It was after receiving the cutting from his aunt in Malaya about the overland trip he decided to return to India.
He related: “The advertisement for the overland ride was 85 pounds and I decided to take the trip.”
Moss travelled overland from London to Calcutta, through France, Italy,
Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Iran, Baluchistan and India and said it took him 45 days and had 45 pounds as his pocket money – a pound a day.
But when he arrived in Calcutta, he found out that Mother India too had effectively closed her doors on him in the decade since his departure as he found life difficult as an Anglo Indian because their resentment for the English.
Moss’ aunt in Malaya turned saviour once again, when she bought him a ship passage ticket to board the SS Santhia, sailing from Kidderpore dock in Calcutta for Singapore passing through Burma.
Moss disembarked in Penang but ran into problems with the immigration
He had already realised that he would have problems heading to Malaya as on August 31st 1957—at the hour of his departure from London’s Victoria coach station on his overland odyssey—Malaya had severed her ties with Empire.
Malaya’s independence from Britain also rang down the curtain on his chances of obtaining residential status.
Moss managed to convince the immigration into giving him a one-week pass to be in Malaya by which time he was hoping to get employment and a work permit.
“I had actually written to Malay Mail before I left England seeking for employment, but what I did not know was that they had replied that there was no vacancies.
“When I arrived in Kuala Lumpur, I went to Malay Mail and met the editor, Martin Hutton. It was then he asked me if I had not received the letter saying that there was no vacancies.
“I pleaded for a job and after I told him of my overland journey to India and then my ship to Malaya to pursue my dream to work in Malaya, then he decided to give me an opportunity to write about my travel experience.
“The next I knew after my article was read by Hutton with my first byline, I was offered a job and got my working permit eventually.
Moss was the chief reporter but given the roving reporter status and had the freedom to write articles which interest him and eventually became the News Editor.
He worked with other journalists and editors like Derek Fenney, Alan Wolstenholme and Leslie Hoffman to name a few.
Moss back row 4th from right
During his days with Malay Mail from 1957-1965 he reported on the last years of the Malayan Emergency, the first years of Malaya's independence following
Merdeka, the Rural Development Scheme, the birth of Malaysia and Confrontation with Indonesia.
In 1960 he was hand-picked by Sir Robert Thomson, then Malaya’s secretary for security, to write a series of articles on the ‘Hidden War’ which continued on the Thai-Malayan border after the end of the Emergency - an assignment which attached him to operational troops on both sides of the frontier.
“During these years I also wrote numerous articles for the Straits Times
Sunday features pages, and was given the freedom to act as roving correspondent, personally selecting off-beat assignments which took me deep into the jungles to live with aboriginal communities or visiting remote insular communities in the Malacca Straits and South China Sea,” said Moss whose life story is so intriguing that he had to write three volumes in an autobiographical that began with Bye Bye Blackbird and Distant Archipelagos and finally the No Babylon.
He has to his credit authored 38 books among them include An Anglo-Indian Memoir, Memories of Malaya, The Singing Tree, The Colour of Asia, Hong Kong Handover, The Long March Back, Hong Kong Style, The Very Nature of Hong Kong, Skylines Hong Kong, Passing Shadows, Lijiang: The Imperiled Utopia, Chinese Symbolism Another City, Another Age; Hong Kong: What’s to See, Building Hong Kong, The Age of Elephants, set in India, White Guerrilla, set in Hong Kong and the Philippines; Landfall, set in Vanuatu, River in Search of a Sea, set in South Africa.
Moss said he would have loved to remain in Malaya, but he could not get his work permit renewed any longer and that was when he moved out to Hong Kong in 1965, where he started off as a Senior Information Officer, with the Hong Kong Government Information Services writing feature articles for overseas publications for three years before he was promoted to Principal Information Officer, editing all government publications for another three years before he was posted to Hong Kong Government Secretariat as its first Principal Information Officer (1971-1975).
He was then promoted to Chief Information Officer in charge of all government publicity campaigns and special promotions.
On retirement in 1993 from the Hong Kong Government he joined Ogilvy & Mather Public Relations (HK) as Deputy Managing Director, handling public affairs and government liaison.
Then in 1995 he decided to take up residence in Canada, which he described as the worst decision in his life.
“I was hoping for a happy retirement in Canada, but I was miserable, lonely and really did not like the place.
“It was then I decided to return to Hong Kong as consultant to Salon Films, Hong Kong’s principal one-stop film production facility.
To date in addition to several scripts for documentaries and shorts produced by
Salon Films, he has also completed twelve screenplays, one of which, based on his novel The Singing Tree.
The multi-talented Moss was Appointed Justice of the Peace in 1986 and in January 1994 awarded the M.B.E. in the Queen's New Year’s Honours list.
Then he decided Malaysia was his home, but could not afford the fees for making it his ‘Second Home’ and decided he will shuttle between Philippines and Malaysia.
And in both places, it is friends who have made it possible to make his home.
In Ijok, it was Mukti Mat Sahid, a driver, whom he befriended during his early days in Malaya for him to learn Malay and Mukti who was interested to learn English.
They became good friends and he even took Mukti and his family to be with him in Hongkong and even educated the two sons – Mazli, who became a banker in Malaysia when they returned from Hong Kong.
Moss’ bonding with Mukti grew strong after he had saved his life by rescuing the latter from his kampong in Ijok, where he was dying from an illness, to take him to the hospital in Kuala Lumpur and see him recover.
In Philippines, it is another friend, an engineer, Rino Cantillano, whom he befriended while working in Hong Kong, who has become his other adopted brother besides Mukti, and now back in Luzon shares his home with Moss.
The Malay Mail in indeed an institution which has indeed played a key role in charting and shaping the lives of thousands who had worked with the paper.

Ends.


IN THE MALAY MAIL

ROLLING STONE THAT GATHERED MOSS

    

FOR veteran journalist and author Peter Moss, Malay Mail played a major part in shaping his life.
Moss, who turned 81 on June 27, was the first roving reporter when he joined the paper in September 1957.
Although he was with the newspaper for only eight years, it was Malay Mail that brought him to then Malaya just after independence.
“We all have those metamorphic moments that send us in completely new directions,” said Moss when met at his house in Ijok.
“I’ve had several, but perhaps the most transformative was a newspaper cutting from the Malay Mail in distant Kuala Lumpur,” he said.
“A thoughtful aunt had dispatched this to me in England when I was desperately seeking new horizons.
“That cutting sent me on an overland journey from London to India by bus, and then on by sea from Calcutta to Penang. It also led me to eight of the happiest years of my life as a roving correspondent in Malaya.”
It was Moss’ story of his journey to Malaya from England that landed him a job with Malay Mail at 22.
Fond memories for Peter as he reads his article about his overland trip from London to India which earned him the job in Malay Mail in 1957
He said: “I was born in Allahabad, India, where my father William Frank Moss was serving the British army before India’s independence in 1947.
“Despite my British inheritance, my British passport and my English education, I had not developed a wholly British identity and outlook.”
After completing his studies in England in 1953, he became an apprentice reporter at Bexhill-on-Sea Observer, before joining the National Service with the Royal Army Pay Corps.
From 1955 to ‘57, he was a district reporter at East Sussex Express & County Herald.
It was after receiving a news cutting from his aunt in Malaya about the overland trip that he decided to return to India.
He said, “The advertised cost of the overland ride was 85 pounds and I decided to take it.”
Moss travelled from London to Calcutta, through France, Italy, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Iran, Baluchistan and India.
He said the journey took him 45 days and he had 45 pounds as pocket money — a pound a day.
When he arrived in Calcutta, he discovered that India too had effectively closed her doors on him in the decade since his departure.
Moss’s aunt in Malaya turned saviour once again when she sent him a ticket to board the SS Santhia, sailing from Kidderpore dock in Calcutta for Singapore.
Moss disembarked in Penang but ran into problems with immigration.
He realised he would have problems heading to Malaya. At the hour of his departure from London’s Victoria coach station on Aug 31, 1957, Malaya severed her ties to Britain, effectively snuffing out his chances of obtaining residential status.
Moss managed to convince immigration in Penang into giving him a one-week pass by which time he was hoping to get a work permit.
“I had written to Malay Mail before I left England seeking employment, but what I did not know was they had replied that there were no vacancies.
“When I arrived in Kuala Lumpur, I went to Malay Mailand met the editor, Martin Hutton. He asked if I had not received 
the letter.
“I pleaded for a job and after I told him of my journey, he decided to give me an opportunity to write about my travel experiences.
“The next thing I knew, I had my first byline. I was offered a job and got my work permit eventually.”
Moss was made chief reporter with roving status. He had the freedom to write articles which interested him and he became news editor.
He worked with other journalists and editors, such as Derek Fenney, Alan Wolstenholme and Leslie Hoffman to name a few.
During his days with Malay Mail from 1957 to ‘65, he reported on the last years of the Malayan Emergency, the initial years of independence, the Rural Development Scheme (Felda), the birth of Malaysia, and Confrontation with Indonesia.
In 1960 he was handpicked by Sir Robert Thomson, then Malaya’s secretary for security, to write a series on the ‘Hidden War’ which continued on the Thai-Malayan border after the end of the Emergency, an assignment which saw him attached to operational units on both sides of the frontier.
“During those years, I also wrote numerous articles for The Straits Times and Sunday feature pages, and was given the freedom to act as roving correspondent.
“I went on off-beat assignments which took me deep into the jungles to live with aboriginal communities or visit remote insular communities in the Malacca Straits and South China Sea,” said Moss.
Moss’ life story is intriguing enough for three volumes of autobiography — Bye Bye Blackbird, Distant Archipelagos, and, finally, No Babylon.
In all, he has authored 38 books, inluding An Anglo-Indian Memoir, Memories of Malaya, and The Singing Tree.
Moss said he would have loved to remain in Malaya, but could not get his work permit renewed any longer.
He moved to Hong Kong in 1965, where he worked with Government Information Services, writing and editing articles for overseas and government publications.
He also wrote screenplays, documentaries and films.
The versatile Moss was appointed Justice of the Peace in 1986 and in January 1994 awarded the M.B.E. in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours List.
FOR REMEMBRANCE: The interview done at Peter Mos's home in Ijok. Librarian Ong Ho Hin a very good friend of Peter came along. It was great to meet Peter.
After briefly living in Canada and returning to Hong Kong, he decided Malaysia was his home, but he could not afford the fees for making it his ‘Second Home’.
He opted to shuttle between Philippines and Malaysia. In both places, it is friends who are instrumental in making him feel at home.