Former Olympians slam PHF for closing camp

KARACHI: Former greats have expressed surprise on the move of the PHF to close the national team’s training camp.
PHF closed the training camp till April 10 citing shortage of funds, without saying anything about how they plan to resolve the issue.
Olympian Samiullah said that time has come for the government to take bold decisions “as it is the question of participation in the Olympics”. Pakistan has only three gold medals in its Olympics history and all three were won by hockey, he said.
He said the government was always ready to provide funds if it was sent the tours’ details and schedule of the preparation “but PHF insists that it should be given Rs500 million in one installment which is not possible due to previous experiences”.
He said nobody opposed the payment of salaries to the players, their daily allowances and expenditure of the foreign tours.
Samiullah said it was unfortunate that the camp had been closed although tours to Australia and South Korea were due next month for the preparation of qualifying rounds of Olympics.
Olympics gold medallist captain Manzoor Junior also criticised the PHF for closing the training camp. “Why should the government release funds? More than Rs1.5 billion was given and the result was that Pakistan failed to qualify for the World Cup and Olympics,” he said.
He said that PHF had no vision to save the national game. “They only work for their personal interests. PHF exists only to serve the interests of a group of people. When their personal benefits dried up they closed the camp to pressurise the government to get more funds in the name of qualifying rounds of Olympics,” he said.
Manzoor said the government should form an ad hoc setup for the PHF and appoint people of spotless character to run the affairs.
He said that funds were spent on joy trips of PHF officials and their family members.
Olympian Naveed Alam said that the players had been playing for the country without salaries for past one and a half years. The coaches and training staff was working without salaries even after two silver medal wins but PHF officials were interested only in getting a big amount in one go. “Their decision to close the training camp is terrible,” he said.
He said that PHF had disrupted the training plan of chief coach Shahnaz Sheikh. “Only three weeks are left before the Australian tour and they have closed the training camp,” he said. He asked where the Rs100 million given by Punjab government to PHF was spent.
He demanded that the government take action. “If they have no solution they should call former players and seek their opinion on how to come out of the crisis,” he said.
Naveed warned that Pakistan’s preparation made so far would go waste if immediate steps were not taken.