THE Nagoya 2026 programme of the national rugby sevens team has become another casualty of the government's funding cuts.
Under the Nagoya project, 20 men and eight women's players, the majority of them under 23, were to be groomed with the goal of turning them into medal contenders at the 2026 Nagoya Asian Games.
The short-lived programme was introduced in June 2020, and the players had been training full-time, year round.
Malaysia Rugby (MR) secretary Amrul Hazarin Hamidon (pic) said the project had stopped, and that the national squad will revert to training camps ahead of competitions.
"Unfortunately the Nagoya 2026 programme has been stopped but we hope it can be resumed once the Sports Ministry is able to secure additional funds later this year or next year," said Amrul.
"What we will do is revert to our usual training camps in the lead-up to major competitions such as the Sea Games, Asian Games and Commonwealth Games rather than training full time year-round.
"We are grateful to the National Sports Council (NSC) for still giving us support (by funding training camp programmes).
"We understand the challenges the government currently faces due to Covid-19 and the recent floods."
With rugby not included in the Vietnam Sea Games (May 12-23), MR's focus this year will be on the Birmingham Commonwealth Games (July 28-Aug 8) and the Hangzhou Asian Games (Sept 10-25).
The women's team have not qualified for the Commonwealth Games this year.
"At the moment we have qualified for the Commonwealth Games (men's event) after finishing in the top two among Asian countries during the recent qualifiers, but for the Asian Games (which has no qualifying tournament), we are still awaiting the invitation letter from the organisers," added Amrul.
"We will call up 15 players for the training camps for each competition but they may not necessarily be players from the Nagoya programme who are generally younger.
"This is because we want to select the best possible players to represent us at the moment, and they may be within the 25 to 30 year old age group."
Malaysia finished fifth overall from 12 teams that competed in the 2018 Indonesia Asian Games and 14th out of 16 teams at the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games.
