By
M.Chandran: I ran away from my first national training camp at Merdeka Stadium in August 1961!
I could not imagine this episode would be the start of a 12-year association with the country’s youth and national teams.
Looking back at that first call-up for the Asian Youth Under-20 football competition in Bangkok which was held the following year, I was just 18 years and very wet behind my ears. I was still in school when I was called up for training with 29 other players.
I was really excited but this excitement didn’t last long. In the first six days of my training, it vanished and I was devastated.
I never imagined that training as a football player could be so tough. I just couldn’t endure the sessions. It was torture. Physically and mentally, I just wasn’t able to take it.
Uncle Choo Seng Quee was a no-nonsense coach, a real taskmaster. A big fella, standing over six feet, he put us through a punishing physical routine, something I had never experienced before. All I knew was how to play with a ball.
The weight training from 6.30am to 7.30am in the Merdeka Stadium carpark was something I wasn’t able to handle.
And immediately after breakfast I had to run off to school. On returning to camp in the afternoon, we had to undergo another one-hour fitness training. Again it was something I dreaded doing.
The only session I liked was when Uncle Choo put us through tactical training for 90 minutes on the Merdeka Stadium pitch in the evening. I enjoyed touching the ball more than all the physical endurance training.
On Monday, a week after being in camp and immediately after the morning session, without anyone noticing it, I packed my boots with my books and left for school – never to return to training camp. No one came looking for me.
I thought that this was the end of the road but in April 1962, I was recalled for the second phase of training. On reporting to Merdeka Stadium, Uncle Choo straightaway recognised me and remarked, “You ran away the last time. From now on you’ll sleep on the bunk next to me.”

From then on he kept a watchful eye on me. He was an excellent coach and was nice to all of us. However, when it came to training he was a disciplinarian.
He was a stickler, too, for punctuality at training sessions and his physical fitness regimen turned out well for us in competition. From him I learned that if you are very fit you are less likely to get injured.
I was again called up for the third phase and to my surprise, I was selected to represent Malaya in Bangkok in the Asian Youth tournament. In fact I played as a centre half in all the matches where we finished fourth overall.
My love affair with the national team started from here and I owe it to Uncle Choo. He was the one who put me on this path and I have great admiration for this man.
Footnote: Chandran captained the Malaysian team to the 1972 Munich Olympics, the one that Malaysia participated in. He was skipper of the 1974 Teheran Asian Games team which won the bronze medal for the first and only time in the Asiad series.

By
N. Thanabalan: In the early years of post-independence, it was passion that drove sports, not the lure of fame or fortune. In the late 60s and early 70s, I remember how we players were content with an allowance of RM2 per day when playing locally and RM5 per day for international duty.
We were happy with the simple meal and accommodation given. The pride was in representing our club, state or country. It was in pulling on the jersey and feeling good just being on that pitch.
Unlike now, we didn’t have the luxury of sponsorships, and so were forced to equip ourselves. I remember begging my parents for a pair of boots, which cost about RM20 then.
Back then RM20 was still considered a hefty price for an average family, like mine and I could only afford one pair of socks. So after every match I had to wash them, so that they would be clean and dry for the next match the following day. But I never complained because being able to play for your team, was all that mattered.
I began my football days, by playing with the older boys in Brickfields, which had many fields then. There was one that was very close to my home at Rozario Street, in 100 Quarters.
I was small in size, which was why I was nicknamed ‘Lilliput’. With the big boys, I knew I would get hit if I wasn’t faster than them. They were tough and even rough, and gave no quarters to the smaller players. But I became faster, and I am grateful for that, because I turned out to be one of the fastest wingers in Malaysian football.
Just as I had a tough upbringing, coming from that neighbourhood, I had a tough upbringing in football too. It was never cushy for us, no glamour, and no luxury of being a national player.
I remember when 15 players would be cramped into one dormitory on double decker beds when training in Merdeka Stadium.
We only had hot tea to look forward to after training, while our coach Choo Seng Quee had a bottle of orange squash in his room. So we would sneak in and help ourselves once in a while, not knowing he had marked the level since he already suspected us.
And even those little gulps of sheer pleasure came with a painful price. For, when Seng Quee discovered the cause of his dwindling bottle of squash, he found his squad guilty and sentenced them to 20 laps around the field at Merdeka Stadium, in the blistering hot afternoon sun, without our shirts on.
Every time there was an unaccounted drop in the squash level, we would get 20 rounds and sometimes more. But it turned out to be a blessing, as we got tougher and fitter than our opponents, through this regimented style of punishment.
And training was never easy, it was tough and demanding. So demanding and punishing, that sometimes we had to tell one another, “Oi!, perlahan la, perlahan” (“Oi! Slow down, slow down”) so we could our catch our breath during training.
And we weren’t spared the Vietnam War either. We were subjected to playing in extreme conditions, including in the midst of this war. For the 1966 Asian Cup tournament, when Malaysia journeyed to Vietnam, the American army were our escort in their armed truck to the match venue.
We could even hear the bombing in the background.
As it turned out that match, would go down in history books as the roughest and bloodiest. Apart from the dangerous conditions, I almost became blind in one eye after taking a nasty elbow hit on my right eye.
I was temporarily blinded in that eye, and I was frightened and was imagining the worst. Fortunately, a traditional Chinese medicine practitioner, a sinseh, was at hand on site. He helped restore my eyesight.
Apart from that, I was also bleeding from my nose, while fellow team mate Lee Soo Pang was on the next bed in the hospital with me, from injuries after he was trampled on.
We were promised an insurance pay out for these wounds inflicted. We are still waiting for it,
But it was all worth it. The beautiful game not only elevated my life, but it gave me so much pleasure and joy. And the pride of donning the national colours, was unequalled in stature.

Thanabalan went on to represent the country in the 1963, 1965, 1967, 1969 and 1971 SEAP Games and the ASIAN Games in 1966 and 1970.

By
Stanley Gabrielle: My poor mother! When all the gratitude owed by the sons of Adam to their mothers are added up in this world, it would make a pile huge enough to erase the evil done by a great many others. Such I believe is the power of good mothers on this good earth.
When my father died unexpectedly in September 1939, my mother had 12 children aged between two and 16 years, and I was due in 3 weeks’ time. After she buried my father she had no way of supporting the family with her husband’s tiny pension, so she put her daughters in the convent and took her sons up to Ipoh to live with her parents.
My grandfather Martin doted on me when I was a little boy as he was also born after his father died. So I grew up as the youngest of 13 children in desperately poor circumstances. Eventually, my mother got her life back together, returned to Kuala Lumpur and was able to keep her whole family with her again.
They tell me I was a little scamp, running around everywhere and always getting into trouble. It must have been very hard for my mother to control me. By the time I was a teenager I loved sport. On Sunday afternoons I used to go to the park and play football with a group of boys. I knew some of them played for good teams, but I found that I could play well against them. In those days I ran around the field barefoot and had no wish to ever wear boots.
In 1956 I was a 16-year-old working for Caxton Press and earning RM60 a month. The Malay Mail Press was to field a team in a competition organised by the Football Association of Selangor (FAS) for all commercial firms. My boss, Frank Vuilleumier, asked me if I wanted to try out. Wicked as I was, I went for the trials only to get the afternoon off-work.
I wore boots for the first time in that match, played reasonably well and was picked for the team. That’s where it all started.
I played with the Malay Mail that year and was spotted by one Mr Albert Foster, manager of the Selangor Rangers. Foster signed me up but to my disappointment I sat on the sidelines for nearly a year. Only when he understood I was about to leave did he give me a game. I played alongside Ray Crawford, who later became England’s striker, and Abdul Ghani Minhat, of the Malayan national team.
When Ray Crawford returned to England I got a regular spot on the team. I only played three games for Selangor Rangers before I was picked for Selangor state. In the first game I played for Selangor I was a bundle of nerves and couldn’t play much at all. I was booed by the crowd from the start to the finish of the game. I have to thank Dato’ Harun Idris, the then president of the FAS. Harun saw something in my game and kept playing me despite my nerves.
I loved my football. I enjoyed playing in so many top teams with so many talented players. I played with the Selangor Rangers, Selangor Chinese Recreation Club, Selangor state, and the Malaysian Chinese Invitation team to Hong Kong, as well as playing for the Malay and Malaysian national sides between 1959 and 1971.
I particularly loved the annual Merdeka tounaments. There were 14 or 15 countries in the tournament and I found it really exciting. We won several times while I was in the team.
In those days football was everything to me and my family followed and supported me all the way. They came to every match they could, even driving down to Singapore and up to Penang. One sister in particular, Doreen, was madly keen on my career. She would attend every match she could and shout all sorts of things from the sidelines. Whenever I got the ball she would pinch whoever was sitting next to her. Woe betide any journalist who criticised me! Doreen would skin him alive in her next letter.
On one occasion Malaysia played against the Football Association of England. Their leader, Tom Finney, was apparenty impressed with my performance and offered me a trial with the Preston North End team in England I took the trial and moved to England but I couldn’t bear the cold and came back quickly.
I remember with great fondness the players in the national team. Abdul Ghani, Arthur Koh, Rahim Omar, M Chandran, Edwin Dutton and Majid Ariff, to name a few. But the one that stands out in my memory is Abdul Ghani. Ghani and I were very close and he taught me a lot about the game. I will always remember him. I also remember the best coach I ever had, Choo Seng Quee.
I was sad I missed some good tournaments through injury. It was so hard to sit on the sidelines. I also saw so many lovely places, but didn’t really stop to enjoy them. In those days it was all about the match. All I really saw was the hotel, training ground and the match. I will need to go back to all those places and see the sights I missed.
In the 1950s and ‘60s there wasn’t a lot of money in the game. We played for the love of it and enjoyed being famous in our country. We could play in front of a crowd of 60,000 people for a RM20 match fee and we got RM2 to go to training.
After my international football career finished, I migrated to Australia in 1973 where most of my sisters and brothers lived. I am getting on now, but I still look back to the great football matches of the 1960s and think how lucky I was to play in such great teams.
In the 1970s and ‘80s, I coached football in Australia and coached such future greats as Tim Cahill, Harry Kewell and Mark Bosnich.
Football has been a big part of my life and I am proud of that.