By 
COOKSTOWN’S Max Anderson earned a second bronze medal at the Sultan of Johor Cup when leading Great Britain’s under-21 team at the prestigious tournament.
Having captained the side to victory at the event 12 months earlier, Anderson enjoyed another successful trip to Malaysia where he earned a player-of-the-match award and scored a goal during the GB side’s six games as they defeated Pakistan 3-2 in the third placed play-off to end the event with a bronze medal to go with the gold he won in 2024 and the bronze he picked up in 2022, having also finished fifth in 2023.
After enjoying so much success at the tournament over the last four years, Anderson is happy with his lot: “Three medals out of four, I can’t be annoyed about that!,” he beamed. “But it did take until my fourth and final year to get a player of the match award, but finally this year!”
GB lost their opening encounter 3-2 to eventual runners-up, India, in a tough first fixture that ended in strangely frustrating scenes when their opponents scored from a 52nd minute penalty corner through captain Rohit after Monty Neave was penalised for discarding his face guard, inadvertently striking an umpire with it in the process.
After that gutting defeat, GB bounced back in their next game against Pakistan, who Anderson had never faced before. Despite their opponents having the tournament top scorer, Sufyan Khan and overall best player, captain Hannan Shahid, GB stormed into a 3-0 first quarter lead before riding their luck for a spell as Pakistan scored, had a goal disallowed and missed a penalty stroke. They then regained control to run out 5-1 victors as Anderson, who was named most promising player at the tournament back in 2022, picked up a first ever player of the match award at the Sultan of Johor Cup.
Unfortunately, any hopes GB had of making a second successive final were dashed in their next fixture when, despite dominating three quarters, they lost 2-0 to eventual champions, Australia, whose goalkeeper Magnus McCausland, made several impressive saves en route to winning the best goalkeeper award.
Again, though, after disappointment came a stunning performance as GB thumped hosts Malaysia, who had drawn with the Aussies and defeated New Zealand, 4-1, to all but secure third position in the round robin table.
They concluded the group section of the tournament with something of a dead-rubber against New Zealand which ended in a 2-2 draw and Anderson on the score-sheet.
That led to GB facing Pakistan for a second time in the tournament as they faced off in the third-place play-off, winning 3-2 on this occasion, to earn the Cookstown man a second bronze medal to go with his gold from 12 months earlier.
Max and his team-mates will now turn their attentions to the FIH Junior World Cup in India before the end of the year when they face Holland, Malaysia and Austria in Pool E, which Anderson feels makes qualifying for the knockout stages extremely difficult.
“The World Cup is an interesting one in terms of what they’ve done,” he explained. “I think they want to get as many countries there as possible, so instead of it being the top two in a group stage tournament going through to the round of 16 or whatever, it’s only the top of each group and the two best second placed teams go through.
“So, it’s not easy to get out of your group and ours has Holland and Malaysia. So it’s an interesting group and with Holland in there it’s by no way easy and we have Holland first game so the prep camp is going to have to be good!”
Prior to the World Cup, Anderson will continue his drive to help Surbiton retain the English League title they won last term when he completed a remarkable and somewhat unique personal hat-trick.
“We won the finals weekend last year, which was brilliant for my first year at Surbiton,” he beamed. “I had quite the year last year from a trophy cabinet point of view. I won the Sultan of Johor Cup with GB 21s and then I won BUCS gold with Nottingham Uni and I won finals weekend with Surbiton, which wasn’t bad going.
“I’d say it’s the most random treble there is to win! It was a very good year last year, so I’ll have to try and top it this year and the only way to do that is to get myself to the Junior World Cup and get a medal at least.
“But getting through the group will be the first thing!”
