R Yogeswaran turns 86 next month and now keeps quieter hours shaped by hospital visits, medication schedules and concern for his wife, June Manohara Shanta.

That life is a far cry from the one defined by training sessions and match days, when he zipped down the left wing for Malaysia and later directed teams from the touchline.

Yogeswaran is now asking the Malaysian government to consider granting him a full retirement pension and medical benefits.

This is not a plea for a favour, nor an attempt to alter policy.

His case rests on an existing legal provision and on a long record of public service, on the pitch and beyond it.

This is not a debate about entitlement. It is about how a nation recognises service when the cheering has long faded.

Yogeswaran’s sporting achievements are well known. He represented Malaysia at the Tokyo Olympics in 1964 and in Mexico City four years later.

He played in two Asian Games and earned selection to the Asian All-Stars in 1966, during an era when India and Pakistan dominated grass hockey.

After his playing years he coached and managed teams at the World Cup, the Olympics, the Commonwealth Games and at other major tournaments.

He helped launch many careers, including young talents who finished fourth at the 1979 and 1982 Junior World Cup, and went on to anchor Malaysia’s senior teams.

In 2014, he was inducted into the Olympic Council of Malaysia Hall of Fame and was later conferred the title of Datuk.

More than medals

Less noticed is that Yogeswaran was also a public servant for 23 years.

He spent 11 years as a schoolteacher under the education ministry and 12 with the youth and sports ministry, where he reached the B9 salary grade before leaving government service.

These facts appear in the official correspondence submitted with his application for full pension and medical benefits, and have been acknowledged by the relevant ministries.

His pension issue arose when he resigned from government employment to take senior positions in hockey administration, including leadership roles in national development programmes such as 1MAS.

The shift kept him working for Malaysian sport but, administratively, it made him ineligible for a government pension.

That kind of career path was not uncommon. Malaysian sport has long depended on people who moved between ministries, associations and private roles without tidy administrative handovers.

Often the practical consequences of such moves appear much later, when health declines and savings dwindle.

Yogeswaran has suffered multiple heart attacks and other serious medical episodes.

Rising treatment costs have strained his resources, and he now relies largely on his wife’s school teacher pension.

His appeal is straightforward: he seeks reassurance that June will be financially secure after he is gone.

For years he pursued this matter quietly, aware of how such requests can be received and reluctant to court publicity.

Only now, with age and illness pressing, has he sought formal consideration.

What the law allows

In its reply to his application, the pensions division of the public services department pointed to a relevant statutory provision.

The department wrote that Section 9 of the Pensions Act 1980 (Act 227) allows the Yang di-Pertuan Agong to grant retirement benefits in specified categories and invited the submission of relevant documents for review and assessment.

The significance of that response is precise: it neither promises approval nor creates an automatic entitlement.

It confirms that the law allows discretionary relief and that the department will review the case when documentation is provided.

Yogeswaran has submitted all the documentation available to him.

As with many public servants whose careers began more than five decades ago, retrieving complete records from his years as a teacher and later with the sports ministry has proven difficult.

Some files no longer exist in accessible form, having been misplaced, archived or lost over time.

This is a common administrative challenge in cases of this age and should not, in itself, obscure the substance of his service.

That is where the discussion should stay grounded. Section 9 exists precisely to handle cases that fall outside neat administrative categories.

It allows for careful judgment, exercised sparingly and on the basis of evidence.

Concerns about opening the floodgates are understandable, but they somewhat do not fit this case.

Yogeswaran’s situation is narrow and specific: more than two decades of government service, decades of national representation, recognised honours and now documented medical and financial vulnerability.

This is not a plea for broad retrospective benefits for all former athletes; it is a request that a discretionary provision be applied to a particular set of facts.

Why now? The answer is simple: priorities change with age.

Yogeswaran’s medical needs have increased and his focus has shifted from personal pride to ensuring his wife’s future.

The record shows he has already pursued appeals through ministerial and departmental channels and been asked to submit further documents for assessment.

No public institution is on trial here. The department has stated the legal pathway and the ministries involved have engaged with the matter.

What remains is a thorough, timely and transparent review guided by facts and by the discretion the law permits.

How a country treats its former servants, especially those whose work brought honour and unity, says much about its values.

Recognition can be modest; sometimes it is found in quiet administrative decisions that allow a life of service to conclude with dignity.

Yogeswaran has not been a demanding man. He stayed with hockey long after the spotlight moved on, working in schools, state programmes and grassroots development.

If the government decides to grant him a pension and medical benefits, it would not be an act of charity.

It would be a measured acknowledgment that some forms of public service do not fit neatly into files and forms.

As a schoolboy he watched the declaration of independence from a seat at Merdeka Stadium.

Today Malaysia has an opportunity to affirm something smaller but still significant: that service is remembered and that dignity in old age is not beyond our means.

R Yogeswaran with his wife June Manohara Shanta, looking through decades of photographs and newspaper clippings that trace a lifetime in Malaysian hockey.

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.