Scrapped Nagoya project leaves rugby squad yearning for more

NAGOYA: The men's national rugby sevens squad will leave the Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games on a bittersweet note on Sunday after achieving a fifth-place finish - equalling their best-ever performance from the 2018 Indonesia games - but also rueing what could have been.

The squad achieved the result despite only training in stints, or camps, in the lead up to the tournament due to a lack of funding.

Malaysia was placed in a tough group alongside China and Hong Kong, who would go on to contest the final, as well as Uzbekistan.

Nik Safuan Ismade Nik Man's charges lost to China (33-21) and Hong Kong (48-0) but beat Uzbekistan (22-0) during the group stage, which allowed them to sneak into the quarter-finals as one of two best third-place teams from the group stage.

Malaysia would again play eventual winners Hong Kong in the quarter-finals, losing 50-0 this time as Nik opted to rest his seniors for the classification matches.

The move paid dividends as his squad notched commendable wins over expatriate-powered United Arab Emirates (33-5) and the Philippines (34-7) to secure fifth place overall.

The Aichi-Nagoya games was supposed to be Malaysia's breakthrough moment in rugby sevens at the Asian level.

In June 2020, the National Sports Council (NSC) and Malaysia Rugby (MR) launched a special programme to groom 20 men and eight women, majority of whom were under-23 players, to become medal contenders at the 2026 Asian Games.

The initiative was dubbed the 'Nagoya Programme' where the 28 players would train full-time, year round. This would allow them to be in peak fitness and sharpness ahead of major competitions.

The short-lived programme, however, became a casualty of widespread government funding cuts and was ended in January 2022.

Nik hopes that his players can once again train under a long-term programme to allow them to fulfil their true potential.

"Our preparations for the Asian Games was only moderate at best. We were only able to train together for three weeks (in Malaysia) and for one week in Japan," said Nik.

"But with close monitoring in terms of training load and recovery, we were able to optimise the performance of the athletes.

"We are, however, hoping to be given the chance to have a longer-term programme in the future which will allow Malaysia to be competitive at a higher level."

The women's squad finished eighth overall in Japan after going down to Kazakhstan (17-7) and Singapore (10-5) in their fifth-eighth place classification matches.

They had lost their group matches to Hong Kong (36-12), China (43-0) and India (26-5).