Why does Malaysia have a need for foreign coaches to do the job at most of the levels? I am speaking of squash here.. It is all about trust and repaying that trust. You see, the mentality that foreign coaches are the better lot is the set mentality of most people in the squash fraternity. In fact, I was speaking to a former administrator of the game and he was adamant that only a foreigner was good enough to raise the level of the players to where Nicol, Azlan and Beng Hee is. To him locals will never be able to do it. And there are many others like him out there.
Yes, as much as I hate to admit it, locals have some lacking areas compared to our foreign counterparts. But here lies the dilemma, do we allow locals to make the mistakes and learn from it to enable a learning process and in the long run improve the standard of coaching? And for certain there will be many mistakes made along the way!
Do the administrators of the sport believe that local coaches can make the improvements and raise their standards? Can the local coaches repay that trust given and ensure they work their asses off and improve themselves first before asking about the monetary rewards? So you see, here lies the problem, there is no trust. But in this world where coming and going of coaches are so frequent, that problem should not arise. Keep replacing till you find the right one.
16 years in Malaysian squash and I am ashamed that we still have foreign coaches running our national team and state team programs. Hong Kong, India, Japan and even Korea are all local. Hong Kong can get Annie Au into the top 20 totally based in Hong Kong and trained by locals. And mind you, the coaches were only average players just like me.. hahaha. But they were given the trust and they took it and repaid that trust.
To summarize it, it takes trust and believe to give someone an opportunity to prove something, a major point lacking in this country. If that trust and believe is not there then no use even going any further.
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