Coach of trapped Thai football team sends apology letter to worried parents

The coach of the trapped Thailand football team trapped inside a flooded cave complex has written an apology letter to parents who have sons among the “Wild Boar” football team.

In a scrawled note handed to divers, the coach of the youth football team sent his “apologies” to the parents of the boys.

“To all the parents, all the kids are still fine. I promise to take the very best care of the kids,” Chantawong said in a note given to a diver on Friday and published on the Thai Navy SEAL Facebook page on Saturday.

“Thank you for all the moral support and I apologise to the parents.”

Reports say the coach’s role in the team’s predicament has split Thai social media, with many heaping the blame of the predicament facing the boys on him.

Yesterday, a rescuer identified as Samarn Poonan, a former member of Thailand’s elite navy SEAL unit who was part of the rescue team in Chiang Rai, died on Thursday night after entering the cave to lay oxygen tanks along a potential exit route.

“The conditions in the cave are tough,” Admiral Apakorn Yuukongkaew, commander of the SEALS unit, told reporters on Friday.

“Once he placed the oxygen tanks he became unconscious on his way back. His buddy tried to administer first aid, when there was no response he tried to move him,” Apakorn said.

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“We won’t let his life be in vain. We will carry on”. Volunteers at the Tham Luang cave in northern Chiang Rai province were shaken by Samarn’s death.

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“A navy SEAL just passed away last night. How about a 12-year-old boy that will have to pass through?” Rafael Aroush, an Israeli living in Thailand and volunteer who arrived at the cave site on Thursday, told Reuters.

“There will be rain and many things could go wrong. I don’t want to say it, but it could be a catastrophe,” he said.

Thai officials revealed earlier that the trapped football team are now practicing wearing dive masks in a bid to hasten their extraction from the cave.

A new video footage of the Thai football team trapped deep inside a cave shows the boys laughing and saying they are doing well, 11 days after they went missing.

 

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