Kota Kinabalu: More than 850 local talents turned up during the two-day open trial to select the State's Rhino squad after another 129 players showed up on the second day at the Likas Sport Complex, Friday.Sabah's newly appointed head coach Azraai Khor Abdullah said he did not expect such a big number to turn up for the trial."Actually, I'm a bit taken aback when so many talented players…young, full of enthusiasm and energy came here for the trial," he said after the session concluded at around 7pm.
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"Like today, we have a lot of youngsters between the aged of 16 and 19 where some of them are very good at such a young age. And since our President's Cup head coach Justin (Ganai) is also here to assist us, we may absorb some of them into the President's Cup squad or even into the State youths team.While declining to roughly give the number of talents selected for the next selection process, Azraai said that the next thing now is to see whether the new faces can click well with the seniors as Sabah FA (Safa) is still retaining almost all of their previous squad, at least until their respective contracts expire in November.
Meanwhile, Azraai admitted that his next concern will be how to deal with issues concerning his selected potentials as some of them are working or staying quite far from the State Capital where their intensive training is to be conducted soon."We will discuss with Safa on how they can help in providing some kind of assistance like accommodation to the players during their stint.
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Azraai was assisted among others by coaches Burhan Ajui, Andrew Majanggim, Jelius Ating and Justin Ganai during the trial.On the first day, Thursday, a record of 736 players from as young as 14 years old attended the trial.