Cooked By A Kok

The disastrous Pinoy performance (or is that non performance?) at the recent 23rd South East Asian Games in the Philippines has left many a blood boiling. And Rey Bancod isn't pulling any punches.

Writing for Tempo, today, Mr Bancod knows exactly who to aim at. The Tempo item will soon disappear after a few days so let me quote the most delicious parts.

Bancod:

The good thing about the disaster is that we can learn something from it.

One lesson is that never, never abandon your troops in the middle of a war.

Go Teng Kok, the flamboyant president of the National Chess Federation of the Philippines (NCFP), did just that to the horror of everyone.

No, no - no relation to Bessel - at least as far as I can tell. Let' hope so anyway. According to Bancod, GTK even went on to label some players as "selfish" and "greedy". In the Australian parlance, we'd call this guy a "bloody wanker". He sounds like one.

Bancod again:

Another thing that the NCFP may have overlooked is training, or the lack of it. The federation took almost an eternity determining the composition of the team to the Games. By the time, the final lineup was completed, the Games were just a few weeks away.

Maybe we should do away with lengthy elimination events – we can’t even agree on how to run them anyway, and just seed players that we think can deliver. With the World Chess Olympiad just four months away, holding elimination events would only eat up time that could be put to better use – like sending the players to train and campaign abroad.

With such a rich chess history as RP does, it is important that whoever are running the NCFP can actually get their act together for the sake of Torino. Anything less than a respectable finish, in the top 15, say, will surely not be acceptable. Last time, RP came 19th. We can do better!

Here is the Tempo news item.