Coaches To Get Perks For Producing Winners

National badminton coaches may get extra perks if they produce winners in the future.

Badminton Association of Malaysia (BAM) general manager Kenny Goh said this is one of the special incentive schemes in the pipeline.

Under the current structure, only players get additional cash for winning titles under the BAM’s incentive scheme.

For instance, world No. 1 Lee Chong Wei took home US$30,000 in prize money after winning the Denmark Open last week while national Elite player Liew Daren cashed in his biggest pay cheque of US$15,000 for winning the French Open on Sunday.

Under the BAM’s incentive scheme, every winner of the Super Series and Super Series Premier tournaments is given RM25,000.

That means Chong Wei and the in-form Daren will get an additional RM25,000 for winning in Denmark and France respectively.

Kenny said that they have been toying with the idea of rewarding the coaches as “it will keep them on their toes and be an added motivation for them to push the players into achieving excellence”.

“Our coaching and training chairman, Ng Chin Chai, introduced a bonus scheme for the coaches for the first time last year.

“We have also been mulling about rewarding coaches for producing winners.

“I have checked with other badminton nations and some of them, like South Korea and Indonesia, have such a system,” said Kenny.

“We must look into how we want to reward these coaches and the percentage to be given as cash incentives. It will be good to get some ideas from our future national coaching director on this matter.”

BAM have not announced the name of the national coaching director but South Korean Park Joo-bong is the likely candidate.

Joo-bong is currently a coach with the Japan BA and is set to decide on his future after a meeting with his employers in the next few days.