Sabah coach worried over live telecast jinx

Some coaches may look forward to their teams playing in matches broadcasted live but not Justin Ganai.

The Sabah coach feels uneasy every time his team are about to play in a live-telecast match and he has every reason to feel that way again ahead of the away match against Selangor PKNS today.

"The game will be shown live on Astro Arena and that cannot be good for us as up until now, we have managed to lose every match we play 'live' on television.

"I am not all that superstitious but I cannot help thinking about this after losing all four live-telecast matches last year (to Kelantan, T-Team, Perak and Kedah) and all those losses were by a solitary goal," he said.

Justin said he had hoped for a different result when Sabah's home match against Lions XII FC was shown live last Saturday.

"But it ended with us losing by a single goal margin and I cannot say that I was surprised by the result.

"Personally speaking, I think we have a live-game jinx  and we will have to be at our best if we were to break this jinx tomorrow (today)," he said.

The coach said Sabah did not play badly against Singapore  as they  dominated possession and created numerous goal-scoring chances.

"But we could not even score a single goal whereas  Singapore had a single freekick in the first half and they found the back of our net.

"Defender Mafry Balang, who was red-carded in that match, will not be at the MBPJ Stadium ) but the rest of the squad have promised to end the jinx and walk away with at least a point," he said.